By Brad Folkestad
As an All-American goaltender for the Bemidji State University men’s hockey program in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Jim Scanlan wasn’t thinking about a career in coaching.
Instead, he had his sights set on extending his playing career beyond college. Little did he know, his time playing for coaching legend R.H. “Bob” Peters would open doors and lay the groundwork for his life’s work as a coach, eventually leading him back to Bemidji State.
In June, Scanlan became the fifth head coach in BSU women’s hockey history when he was hired to replace Steve Sertich, who retired after eight years with the program.
“It feels really, really good,” Scanlan said. “I still pinch myself, to be honest with you. To come
to work at the Sanford Center every day, and
to work with these talented young ladies, is
just phenomenal.”
Scanlan’s coaching career got its start in 1984 when a former teammate pitched the idea to the minor-league goaltender.
“I had a free-agent tryout with the Buffalo Sabers following my senior year, got bounced down through the minor leagues and wound up playing for the Warroad Lakers in the senior ‘A’ league,” he said.
“I had done that for two years when Mike Gibbons, who was an assistant coach at Northern Michigan, called to asked if I would be interested in being a graduate assistant,” he added. “NMU needed a goaltender coach.
“At that time, playing was what I wanted to do, but certainly with the way Coach Peters ran his practices and what he gave us in the classroom, it was almost like he was setting us up for that. If you wanted to be a coach, you had the blueprint in your hands.”
Scanlan took the job, moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and the rest is history.
“That was my first real experience with coaching, and it was one year there and then I got a full-time assistant job at Western Michigan,” he said. “I am really fortunate that worked out the way it did.”
After a four-year stint at Western Michigan, Scanlan landed a job as an assistant coach at the University of North Dakota, where he remained until 1996.
For the past 18 years, he has spent time as an educator, coach and activities director in the East Grand Forks School District. He served as the Green Wave’s boy’s hockey coach from 1996 to 2005, during which he led EGF to a 148-109-15 record, four section titles and four state tournament appearances, finishing as high as second in 1999.
Most recently, Scanlan completed his sixth season as head coach of the EGF girl’s ice hockey team, compiling an overall record of 110-51-6. His 2013-14 Green Wave team posted a 26-3-1 record, earned a Section 8A championship, and climbed to No. 1 in the state’s ranking before falling in the 2014 Minnesota state championship game. After the season, Scanlan was named Minnesota Class “A” Coach of the Year.
Now back at BSU, where he met his wife, Cyndy, and earned nearly 70 wins in net en route to a pair of national titles, the NCHA Player of the Year award and NAIA All-American awards in 1981 and 1982, Scanlan is charged with propelling the BSU women’s hockey team to new heights as it competes in the toughest women’s hockey league in the nation.
Early in the season, it looks like Scanlan is settling into his new job nicely. The team is off to the best start in school history, and Scanlan is getting contributions from every player on the roster.
While he may have picked up pointers from other coaches along the way and developed some of his own coaching habits, most of Scanlan’s playbook stems from the blueprint he received as a Bemidji State hockey player.
“Bemidji State has meant so much to my family and me,” he said. “To be able to come back and work here as the head women’s hockey coach is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s really, really special.”