The Robert Morris men’s hockey team made a little history recently.
By adding a woman to its coaching staff.
Based on information released by the RMU Department of Athletics website, Brianne McLaughlin-Bittle “is believed to be the first female assistant coach in the history of NCAA men’s hockey, Division I or otherwise.”
McLaughlin-Bittle was a standout goaltender on the RMU women’s team from 2005-09. She won two Olympic silver medals (2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi) and two IIHF World Championships.
She has also coached on the women’s team as an assistant with her husband, Logan Bittle, who is an alum of the men’s program.
McLaughlin-Bittle is volunteer coaching the goalies for head coach Derek Schooley. One of them, grad transfer Justin Kapelmaster, is off to a torrid start in his Colonial career.
“She’s excited to be here,” Schooley said Monday. “And we’re glad she’s here. We wanted a qualified person for the position. Gender, male or female, didn’t matter.”
In Tuesday’s podcast linked below, McLaughlin-Bittle joins me to talk about breaking ground in the college hockey coaching ranks, if she has eyes on being a head coach someday, and the nuances between coaching male and female goalies.
We also get into how her own private goaltender instructional business helped prime her for the move to coaching men and how hockey skills are transferable to both genders.
