Coach Chris Hall Leads the Hawks with Over 15 years of experience
While the Roger Williams University men’s hockey team has had a tremendous amount of success as a new program, it is important to look at a big reason as to how they got there: Coach Hall. RWU men’s hockey coach, Coach Hall, grew up in Northbridge, Massachusetts, starting with youth hockey and later in life, during his undergraduate years, was a fourth goalie for Notre Dame and a student assistant. While he fell in love with the game, unfortunately, he suffered a concussion, but he wanted to stick around the sport differently, leading to his decision of getting into coaching. After undergraduate studies at Notre Dame, Coach Hall was a graduate assistant at UMass for two years and worked at Amherst College as a goalie coach. Adding on to his experience, Coach Hall worked at Colby for six years and worked with women’s hockey for five years. After this, he took the job at RWU, spending a year recruiting players for the men’s hockey team and allowing the program to thrive, giving his first year of coaching at RWU fifteen years of prior experience.
Hall expresses coaching this team and experience so far as a “wild ride” as he states it has been a lot of fun while also being a “labor of love”. His favorite part of this experience is that no two days have been the same, making this the most fun coaching job he has ever had. Different challenges and successes come with each new day on the job. While every day is different on and off the ice, Coach Hall mentions how rewarding it all is, especially to experience all of the ups and downs while growing together as a team. Hall believes that this team will be a real playoff contender because of this and how coachable all of the players are. He states how there is depth to their play, and they don’t look like a team full of guys who don’t know what they are doing, but rather a cohesive unit, which is the best part. Hall hopes to start back up next season where they ended, which seems very realistic as most of the players are freshmen and there will not be a completely new team to manage, but rather they will be able to focus on limiting mistakes, managing the puck, and winning from the jump. He wants the best for the team and puts a lot of pressure on himself. He mentioned his biggest challenge is the daily struggle to live up to his own standards, as he has experienced many different programs operating at a high level, and after seeing how many of these big programs operate, he states, “you don’t know what you don’t know”. Furthermore, it is a lot of work to make sure the ball doesn’t get dropped, and the program is a reflection of him; he wants it to meet his expectations. As Hall tries to live up to his own standards, he also reflects on some of his favorite moments and the team’s accomplishments throughout the season.
While their first win will always be a good memory, two specific games he mentioned were the Endicott and Suffolk games. During the Endicott game, he believes that’s where the team learned how to play college hockey, and the Suffix game is where the team noticed they can win. Adding on to the excitement of this team, next year, Coach Hall says he is most looking forward to being back with this group of people and the guys, the energy, spirit, and culture.
By: Alexandra Tavaglione, Brenna Medeiros, Ana Dwyer