Ice hockey coach brings professional experience, vision to hockey club

Being the third coach in four years in any sport at any school is certainly tough, especially one with a national championship runner-up title just three seasons ago.

You know a lot is expected of you. And quick.

And yet, after the IU club ice hockey team’s No. 23 ranking at the end of last season, the team decided it needed to go in a different direction. Tom Orr left as coach at the end of the season, and the team hired Jan Jas, an experienced coach and player who has competed around the globe.

Jas, a native of Presov, Slovakia, learned to play hockey growing up, and as he got older and became swifter on his skates, he made the Slovak national U-16 and U-17 teams. Later, Jas moved to Canada to play junior hockey from 1995 to 1998 before his 11-year professional career both in the United States and Europe.

Jas has played in several minor professional leagues in the U.S., such as the former East Coast Hockey League, the Central Hockey League, the United Hockey League and the International Hockey League. He was a member of the 1999-2000 Indianapolis Ice team that won the Central Hockey League championship, and he’s played for teams in six countries, including the U.S., Canada, Slovakia, Italy, Austria and Poland.

And with all this experience, Jas said he feels that he was a great addition to the IU hockey coaching staff.

“I can’t say anything about any of the other coaches that came before me,” Jas said. “But one thing I do bring to the table is experience. I’m trying to hand off the best experiences I’ve had from the best coaches I’ve had to the players I’ve got right now.”
And he said he feels that his players are starting to catch on.

Through a season filled with “ups and downs and several unexpected things that came our way,” Jas said he feels that, as individuals, his players’ skills have greatly improved during the few months he has worked with them.

The problem, though, has been turning that improvement into wins.

His team, ranked No. 27 by the American Collegiate Hockey Association, currently sits at 4-15, yet five of those losses have come by a single goal. Fourteen of the team’s games have been against opponents who either are currently ranked in the top-25 of the ACHA rankings or were when IU played them, and the team has only been able to win three of its contests against such squads.

But Jas has not become discouraged from the close losses or even that the team has dropped 10 straight.

“No matter who we play, whether they’re the No. 1 team in the country or not, all I want to see is the best effort from every guy I have in the lineup,” Jas said. “We’re getting better day to day, and I think we’re going to start beating some teams and begin to get recognized around the country.”

Jas came into the season with numerous roadblocks as a first-year coach. He had to form a team out of a roster and recruits that he had no control over and said he has come to realize that his players are students too. Jas has had to learn to schedule around — and sometimes practice and play without — some of his best players because of their schedules in the other parts of their lives.

“They’re student athletes, not just athletes, and that has been something I’ve had to get used to,” Jas said. “They have other interests, along with school work and studying, and then hockey comes in as well.”

But Jas and his players got a much-needed break during Thanksgiving. While he was able to spend some time with his wife, his newborn child and his two dogs at his home in Noblesville, Ind., his players finally were able to get some time away from school and their athletic responsibilities.

“I think it was a good mental break,” Jas said. “School, combined with getting slammed into the boards and the ice every day, can become grueling, and concentrating on both is hard to do.”

But Jas and his players were all back in action at practice Tuesday, and later in the week, they’ll travel to Tempe, Ariz., to face the No. 8-ranked Arizona State team in three weekend games. And though Jas said he knows wins in any of these games will be tough to achieve, he knows wins aren’t everything.

“It’s not always about wins and losses,” Jas said. “It’s really about helping our team get better and achieving success. I want to build a program that can attract players around the country and gradually become a better tradition here at IU.”