Brad Frost has won four national championships as University of Minnesota Women’s hockey coach.
Brad Frost can admit it now: He didn't know what junior varsity meant.
But when the then-22-year-old was offered a position as the JV girls hockey coach at Eagan High School near Minneapolis years ago, he jumped at the opportunity.
There was just one caveat.
"O.K. Practices are at 5 a.m. every day," Frost's boss told him.
Nearly three decades later, Frost is now among the most decorated coaches in all of college sports. He's led the University of Minnesota women's hockey program to four national championships and 10 Frozen Fours, including an undefeated season in 2013.
"We're in the winning business, but we can't go into a hockey game saying, 'We've got to win,’” he said. "It's really kind of dumbing things down to, here's what we believe if our players do effectively will give us the best chance."
As part of a two-part series, Best of 7 spoke to Frost about establishing four cultural pillars within his Golden Gophers program, navigating a year of uncertainty as an interim head coach, and how he defines "the process" for his team.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Coach, I know you started out coaching a few different sports at the high school level. What did you learn early in your career that you still apply?
I graduated from Bethel University in 1996 with a Phys. Ed and Health degree, a minor in coaching. Being a Canadian, I didn't really understand the U.S. system. I became the girls volleyball coach at New Life Academy in Woodbury, Minn., and had a great experience.
I was 22 years old coaching these high school girls. It was really about growing and learning together. I didn't necessarily know all of the strategy, but I did know how to connect with people, and I still think that's one of the most important things — to build relationships and connect. You can learn strategy. But how you deal with people and manage them is probably most important. If you can do that, the sky's the limit.
You were an assistant at Minnesota before getting promoted. Can you take me through that year as interim coach and how you ultimately got the full-time job?
I started as an assistant coach under Laura Halldorson in January of 2001. Our program was still relatively young, but the opportunity to coach under her for seven years was really important in growing my foundation. We had some great success and won the national championship in 2004 and 2005.
Laura resigned pretty suddenly in August of 2007, and since I was the associate head coach and the girls were coming back within a couple weeks, the athletic director said, “The job's yours for the year. Then we'll do a national search.”
There were things that Laura did and said where I was like, "I'm going to take that with me and I'm going to keep doing it." Then, there were things she did where I was like, "I think when I'm a head coach, I'm going to do it a little differently." You have to be true to who you are and what you really believe. We had a great year, and I was fortunate to get hired full time.
How did you manage all of the uncertainty that came with being an interim coach?
I always say, I'm going to try and do things the right way for the right reasons so that when I lay my head down on the pillow every night, I have no regrets.
I was at peace with, "Listen, this is where God has me now. If this is where he wants me to be following that interim year, then it will happen. If not, then he's got something even better for me where I can make even more of an impact." Not everybody may have that faith or that belief, and that's O.K., but I think being true to who you are. Don't try and be like the former coach, don't try and be like who the AD is hoping you're going to be — just be you. If it's enough, it's going to be enough.
How did you go about implementing your own cultural visions to a program that was already established and successful?
My first few years, I felt a lot of pressure to continue to win national championships. That's what I valued. We actually made it to the Frozen Four a few of those years, but we didn't win. I still remember the time that we had our banquet at the end of the year, and players and parents were kind of ticked off — and I was too — but I was more proud of our team for the journey.
What I realized at that point in time was that that was on me. I was the reason that they were still ticked off. I was the reason that they were still upset about the outcome of the hockey game — because that's what I valued. It was all about winning, and we didn't win our last game. That's when I really started to think it's got to be about more. We're with each other for so long — the last thing that I want is our players to not have a great experience.
Some valuable thoughts. How did you settle on your program values?
Right around the summer, going into 2011, one of my good friends and the assistant coaches and I were talking, and I just said, "It needs to be about something other than winning your last game." That's when we started talking about values and how important those are. We came up with tough, grateful, disciplined and devoted, and we just really started to say, "This is what it has to be about. This is success. If we can embody and fulfill these values each and every day, then we're going to be successful."
You think as a young coach, "O.K., we put these values up on the wall. Everything's going to be fine." But it still wasn't, because they really hadn't come to life because we didn't necessarily promote them. We'd have a meeting at the beginning of the year, talk about them, and then not really talk about them the rest of the way.
We realized we actually need to live these things out. We need to talk about them in more than just our opening meeting. Then we got buy-in from our players. And when the players buy in, and they fulfill and embody those values each and every day, then you've got something.
What was ultimately the key to establishing that trust and buy-in?
It was our captains, one of whom was Bethany Brausen, who's the head coach at St. Thomas now. Sarah Erickson was another one. We're not in the room most of the time, especially with the women's program. They needed to be the ones who were buying in.
The other thing that we talked about, along with our values, was we're not going to focus on the outcome anymore. We're going to focus on the process of getting the outcome. We were very much process-based and continue to be a process-based organization that really focuses not on winning hockey games but on what can we do each and every day to hopefully help us?
A lot of coaches I speak to reference the process. I'm curious — how do you define it for Minnesota Women's Hockey?
As a staff, we look at our team and we say, "O.K. What are the things that are going to make us successful, both on and off the ice?" That could be simple puck movement on the power play. That could be, we're going to have strong wall play. We're going to drive the net, and we're going to protect the net front. We come up with five or six things that are competencies for our forwards, D and our goaltenders.
We tell them when we're in the midst of a hockey game and you're wondering, "What do I need to do better?", you need to go back to your competencies. Because we just believe, with the talent on our team and the players on our team that if each individual can fulfill those competencies, that's the process of helping us win a hockey game.
We know we want to win the game at the end, but our goal is to be really good in those competencies and imagine that there's a sheet over the scoreboard. We're going to pull that thing off, and we're going to see what the result is.
It's really hard, right?
What I learned…
I thought Coach Frost’s perspective around discussing his program values in an early-season meeting, but failing to consistently reinforce these in his early coaching years, was especially valuable. My guess is it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in them or that he lost sight of their larger significance.
But amid the seemingly endless decisions that need to be made daily and the other common stresses of the job, it becomes easy to say “We did that already” and move on to whatever’s next.
I would suspect that Coach Frost’s added reinforcement of tough, grateful, disciplined and devoted allowed him to hold his players accountable while at the same time giving them a larger collective identity and purpose.
That, ultimately, seemed to be pivotal in shifting from being outcome-oriented to process-based, and allowing them to focus more on what was actually in their control.
“You are what you emphasize,” as the saying goes.