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At another Frozen Four, Gophers’ Brad Frost right where he wants to be

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s hard to believe that longtime Gophers women’s hockey coach Brad Frost is a couple of favorable breaks away from still being a P.E. teacher in the Twin Cities suburbs.

What’s even harder to believe? He says he would be perfectly content if that was his reality right now.

“No doubt,” said Frost, whose first job out of college was as a physical education teacher at Northview Elementary School in Eagan. “That was great for me. I was living my dream. I didn’t realize that coaching at a level like this was even something that was possible.”

That’s always the most difficult thing for Frost to fathom when moments like this arise — and why he forces himself to take a step back every once in awhile to realize how lucky he is to be in this position.

With the Gophers playing in another the Frozen Four this weekend in Hamden, Conn., the 45-year-old took a few moments to himself earlier this week to drink in the moment. He stood alone in the concourse at Ridder Arena, smack dab in the middle of the empire he helped build. He looked up at the rafters, which are lined with dozens of banners, each one a visual representation of how he has helped take the program to new heights over the past two decades.

Frost’s Gophers (31-5-1) play Cornell in a semifinal game at 3 p.m. Friday. Wisconsin takes on Clarkson in the other semifinal at 6. The winners meet in the title game at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

“We know the expectations are there,” Frost said. “That’s exciting. You want to coach at a place where there’s an opportunity to compete for national championships. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

His massive success raises the same question over and over again: What’s left to accomplish at this level?

To that, Frost quickly poses another question to anyone who will listen: Why would I want to go anywhere else?

“This is it for me,” Frost said. “I’m at the premier program in the country. This is where I want to be for a long, long time.”

Maybe it’s not surprising considering his serendipitous journey to get to this point.

Usually laser-focused on living in the moment, on this particular day, Frost lets himself think back to a time when he was a 20-something-year-old who never even considered coaching at the college ranks.

As a rather undersized kid growing up in Ontario, he quickly shifted his unrealistic dreams of playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs to more realistic dreams of teaching and coaching, wherever that may be.

That led him to Bethel University in St. Paul, where he played on the men’s hockey team while majoring in physical and health education and minoring in coaching. He was a pretty good player, too, serving as the captain in his final two seasons with the program.

That said, Frost knew good and well that he would being going pro in something outside of his sport. He graduated and started at Northview Elementary School without much thought about what was next. There, he met Merlin Ravndalen, who had just gotten the head coaching job with the girls team at Eagan High School.

“We met and he was like, ‘Oh. You played hockey? You want to coach?’ “ Frost said with a smile, realizing how that mundane exchange set him on a trajectory he never dreamed of. “He told me he had a JV spot and I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. We didn’t have JV when I was growing up. He gave me my start. That’s how it all started.”

Frost parlayed that experience into a role as an assistant coach at Bethel, serving under longtime men’s hockey coach Pete Aus. He did so while maintaining his position at Northview Elementary School.

His life changed in 2000 when he met former Gophers women’s hockey coach Laura Halldorson at a hockey camp in Detroit Lakes, Minn. She was the leader of the event, attending it with her assistant coach Joel Johnson. They needed an extra body to help out, and Johnson, who happened to be best friends with Frost from their time in college, called and asked him to join.

Then, a year later, Halldorson found herself caught in a bind when assistant coach Libby Witchger resigned. Needing to fill the position on the fly, she immediately thought of Frost, who was still coaching just up the road at Bethel.

“We needed somebody quickly and I wanted to make sure it was someone that shared the same kind of philosophies I did,” Halldorson said. “More than anything else, I just really liked how he fit with our program.”

To this day, Frost can’t believe how quickly everything went down.

“When the opportunity arose here as an assistant coach (with the Gophers), it was a dream come true,” he said, shaking his head. “To see where it’s take taken me is pretty incredible.”

As an assistant coach, Frost was a part of two NCAA championship teams, establishing himself as a well-respected figure within the program.

Little did he know his life was about to change again in the couple of months leading up to the 2007-08 campaign when Halldorson abruptly announced her retirement due to personal reasons.

“It just felt like it was the right time,” she said. “I still remember calling my assistant coaches into my office to let them know. They were not expecting that news. I still laugh about it because when I told them, there was a audible gasp that came out of Brad’s mouth, and I thought he was going to fall off his chair. He probably had an idea what that meant for him.”

With the season so close and no time for athletics director Joel Maturi to conduct a national search, Frost took over on an interim basis.

“He was very honest with me that he was going to do a national search at the end of the year,” Frost said. “My life changed instantly. All of a sudden the title changes on the business card and I was no longer the person that all the players loved on the bench. You’re having to make the tough decisions, and it’s a really big difference. It took a little bit of time to figure out.”

While Frost had success in his first year as head coach, Maturi still conducted a national search. In the end, Frost was offered the full-time position, and the rest is history.

“Even though it was a hard decision to step down, it was a little easier because I knew who would be taking over,” Halldorson said. “I remember I would always say the program is in a good place and in great hands. I truly believed that.”

Yes, it was.

Since taking over, Frost has taken the program to new heights that were unimaginable a decade ago. He has been behind the bench for four national championships, and perhaps more notably than that, an unprecedented 62-game winning streak.

“He really wants to be a part of it, and I think that trickles down to players,” senior Kelly Pannek said. “He is invested in every player, and I think that attracts people to the program. He really shows us how much he cares about this program day in and day out.”

That’s something Frost is very cognizant of, so much so that as he walked away from his weekly media availability earlier this week, he made a point to answer the same question that always seems to come up at this time of the year.

“Nope,” Frost said when asked about potentially trying to move on to bigger and better things. “This is everything for me. I’ve been here almost 20 years. It’s just a joy to come to the rink every day. I can honestly say there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t looked forward to getting out here. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

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