Recently, I paid a visit to the University of Nebraska-Omaha to chat with Trev Alberts. My interview with the athletic director was rescheduled three times because of issues that popped up that he had to attend to. That should give you an idea of just how busy he is… which is how I began our fireside chat.
Part one of my interview deals with the search for a new hockey coach. I will post the other parts in the coming days.
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Schick: What’s been the most challenging part of your first six weeks on the job?
Trev: Trying to keep everything straight. Trying to figure out what day it is, what time it is. It gets to be three o’clock and I think , gee I forgot to have lunch today. But it’s a blast. It’s a lot of hard work. I enjoy working with the people in this department and the coaches. We’re really gonna enjoy it once we begin to see the fruits of our labor.
Schick: What is the status of the search for a hockey coach?
Trev: We’ve had great response for our opening. We decided to wade through all of the applicants and maybe pick a few that were really qualified folks. Then there’s gonna be a process of reaching out to see how much interest there is. Some of those people didn’t apply, and some did. We have not had any on-campus interviews, and going forward we don’t have any on-campus interviews scheduled. We need to find out the interest-level and then see if we can hire them.
Schick: How many applicants?
Trev: I don’t know the exact number. It’s a lot. I will tell you there’s a couple of folks that no one can figure out exactly who they are (laughing). So I’m not sure that they count. We’ve done some research, trying to properly vet some of the candidates, and we don’t find any evidence they actually coached hockey. That’s a bit of a disqualifier.
Schick: Have you narrowed it down to a list of finalists?
Trev: We don’t have finalists. I don’t think we have to get to a point where we name finalists. I’m a little different. I don’t want to have a parade of folks come in. That’s just not in my being. I just want the committee to come together and find a list of folks that they are interested in and maybe find a person and see if we can sign that person to be our hockey coach.
Schick: When do you expect to name a coach?
Trev: I would like it to happen tomorrow because that could be one thing I could check off. It’s a process, it takes time. We’d like it to be in the middle of the month of June. We will not rush this decision. It’s too important for our future. We will do all of our due diligence. We’re going to aim for the moon, and try to get the best possible candidate that we can to try to convince him to be our head coach. If that happens soon, great. If it’s later, that’s okay too. We need to get the right fit.
Schick: Is it safe to say that if you don’t name a coach before the College World Series that you will do if after the College World Series?
Trev: I don’t want to take anything away from the College World Series by naming a hockey coach. Is that what you mean? (laughing) No, I know what you meant. The College World Series is very important to Omaha. It’s important to gain energy with the announcement of a new hockey coach. But we don’t want to overthink it. Would it make a lot of sense to sit on it for two or three weeks if we’ve found someone?
Schick: What will be your expectations for a new hockey coach?
Trev: One of the things that we can do as an athletic department is sit down with all of our coaches and establish our expectations. I don’t know that we’ve done a very good job at that. Obviously, championships are fun. But I’m also a realist. I’ve always thought that you oughta finish in the top-half of your conference and you oughta win a conference championship every five years. At least be making progress towards that. You don’t wanna make a statement that that’s all we wanna do. We want to win a national championship every year. But we also understand the reality of our situation. I just want all of our programs to be making progress. Part of them getting better is giving them the tools and resources to get better. We can’t have unreasonable expectations on our staff and then not allow them to be successful. I assure you that we will reinvest in hockey and we will get the resources in place we need to allow said coach to be successful. There will be expectations probably different with hockey. With resources come expectations. You pick your poison, right? We’ll see what happens. I truly am looking for someone who one day will hang a banner for UNO. If we are not in the business of those expectations, Matt, then I clearly am in the wrong business.
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the “Thriller” single and we (sister and I) would play it on our little Fisher-Price record player, and run around in a circle in the family room during the entire song. It was fun, but became a somewhat awkward diversion once I turned 21. 
As I told you on Wednesday’s six o’clock newscast, Creighton baseball coach Ed Servais has been contacted by Wake Forest about its head coaching vacancy. A source close to the situation tells KETV that a decision could come this weekend.
There’s an interesting story looming on the horizon. If it happens, it will be one of the biggest stories to hit Omaha since Michael Phelps hit the water.
