2025/2026 Girls Hockey

John will be entering his 3rd year as a head coach at Yale. John started his love for hockey growing up in Minnesota. There he played competitive hockey from Mites through Bantams including a couple season on a MN select team competing throughout the state and in Canada. After moving to CT he played at Staples high coop and Fairfield High. He also won states and competed in Regionals for a strong Mid Fairfield Midget Tier 1 team and ultimately ended up playing club in college. 

John is a level 4 certified coach with years of experience coaching girls hockey. The 2025-2026 U16 season will be John’s 8th season of coaching girls hockey and 6th as a head coach. John measures the success of his team by the improvement every player makes throughout the year as well as the improvement as the team as a whole. 

Sam is joining the Yale Hockey program as the U19 girls hockey coach for the 2025-2026 season.  She grew up playing hockey in Connecticut as a defenseman, starting with the Wallingford Hawks, played with the Connecticut Wolves and Connecticut Wolfpack during the summers, attended national camps, and eventually played on the Connecticut Polar Bears U15AAA, U16AAA and U19AAA national bound teams.  From there she went on to play for Choate Rosemary Hall and eventually Rochester Institute of Technology. 

While playing was always a passion, she excelled at officiating starting at 9 years old.  She was an accomplished referee even beyond her playing years including Level 4 USA Hockey certification, NIHOA, Division 1, and Division 3 college hockey as well as some IIHF time. 

Currently, Sam is an assistant coach for the Choate Rosemary Hall varsity program.  She is looking forward to continuing to grow girls hockey in Connecticut and helping to develop the program’s talent year over year.

Born and raised in Michigan Dave played his youth hockey from age 4-17 in the Detroit area. After youth hockey Dave played three seasons in the NAHL for the Lakeland Jets and the Detroit Freeze. Dave played 4 seasons of Division 1 ACHA hockey where he was Captain of the Eastern Michigan University Hockey team for three of his four seasons making it to the National Championship game in 2000. Dave had a short stint in the Western Pro League and ultimately finished his playing career as a three time USA Hockey National Champion with the Detroit Raters (Senior Full Check Team) 2000,2003,2011. 

Dave is a USA Hockey level 4 Certified Coach and is entering his 7th season as an Assistant Coach this will be his 3rd season with Yale. Dave is passionate about hockey and believes in teaching more than a game, he believes in teaching life lessons and skills through hockey that his players will take with them long after their playing careers. 

Growing up in Hebron, CT, Craig played youth hockey at ECHO and then played varsity hockey and served as captain at East Catholic High school. Much to his parents delight, every room in their house, every plot of grass and neighborhood street and tennis court acted as impromptu hockey rinks. His passion for the game as a kid is still going strong, Craig still plays adult hockey even though it keeps him out past his bedtime. 

He is a level 4 certified coach who has coached youth hockey for six years at Wonderland Wizards and Yale Youth Hockey, as well as at the Development League in Shelton. This is Craig’s second year coaching girls hockey at Yale. Craig feels that hockey has taught him a lot in his life and draws from his passion to help the athletes he coaches. He believes training skills and knowledge of the game is essential but so is learning through loss and adversity, tenacity, humility, grace in victory, keeping good routines and work ethic. Craig is appreciative of the opportunity to share that with the team.