Natalie Darwitz Talks Lakeville South Girls Hockey

As a hockey player, Natalie Darwitz has compiled an impressive list of accomplishments: three World Championships, three Olympic Medals, USA Hockey Player of the Year, and NCAA Frozen Four MVP, just to name a few. 

But for Darwitz the head hockey coach, the canvas is blank. The hopes to color it with hues of having fun as well as striving for excellence—on and off the ice—in laying the foundation for the future. In Darwitz, the Cougars have an exciting opportunity to draw from her skills and knowledge as a player. But they also have the opportunity to draw on Darwitz’s qualities as a person.

Lakeville Patch recently caught up with the new head coach to find out how her inaugural season is going—a season that began with high expectations while competing in a very tough South Suburban Conference, and which has so far featured a recent 6-0 win over Eagan, Darwitz’s former high school team that also features her father, Scott Darwitz, on the coaching bench.

Patch: Evaluate the season so far. Lakeville South was ranked in the preseason Top 10. Is the team where you thought it would be at this point?

Darwitz: As far a rankings go, we don’t really follow that too much or concentrate on it. For us, we want the goal of getting better every time we get on the ice, whether that’s in practice or a game. I like the progression of our team. I think they’re starting to understand the concepts we’re teaching in practice. They’re going out and working hard each day which is what we ask for. We want to be playing our best hockey come the end of February when we go into sections, then hopefully we can move on. So that’s our goal, to strive for that.

Between that, we want to do better each game. There’s a process to the season. I definitely like our work ethic, I like our competitiveness and that’s all you can ask for, for your girls to come out on the ice and get better each day. And they’ve been doing that. Now it’s just a matter of continuing that every single game and keeping that high intensity up.

Patch: Where do you think this team can finish?

Darwitz: Our main goal is to get better each game. There’s games where we’ve done that and there have been games where we’ve kind of taken one step back, two steps forward type of a deal. But for the most part the girls are responding well. They’re coming in to the ice ready to work hard every day. We want to create a fun culture where they’re having fun on the ice but at the same time they know they need to work hard and get better.

Obviously every team has a goal to win their section or win their conference and go to the state tournament and win the state tournament. That’s a no-brainer. We want to do the best we can and when the time comes, we want to go as far as we can. But right now our focus is on our next game. Anything past that, that’s not in our focus. We’re a team that’s in the present moment and we have to take it step by step. For us, there is really no point to look ahead to February when we have a lot to accomplish right now.

Patch: What are the biggest challenges to reaching those goals?

Darwitz: I think a challenge for any team through a whole season is to be consistent. Obviously we play in a tough conference and I like that. Every game the girls need to be ready to go both mentally and physically. As you see in our conference, anybody can knock anybody off on any given night. I love that we’re playing in a competitive conference.

For our team, it’s the consistency piece. There’s games where we show up flying around, and there’s games where we don’t show up until the second or third period. The message to the girls is we have to have 51 minutes of solid hockey. That’s hard to do. It’s easy to say, but it’s really hard to do. We try to break it down into five-minute increments. Let’s win the next five, let’s win the next five, let’s win the next two...the main focus is breaking the game down and not worrying about the third period when you’re playing the first period. I would just like to see a little more consistency in our team, that’s been our biggest challenge internally for us.

Patch: How do you think your experience and success with top-flight programs filter through to the Lakeville South girls and how are they receiving it? 

Darwitz: Well, my philosophies have obviously been well established with my values and who I am as a person. I’ve been fortunate to have been coached by some of the best coaches in the world and I have my dad ten miles away in Eagan. I talk things through and run some ideas by with him. My assistant coaches are very knowledgeable, too, so I’m surrounded by really good people and I get to implement all of that stuff that I’ve learned through them as far as what I like to do myself into my program.

That’s been a lot of fun for me to kind of take the reigns and establish a culture within Lakeville South and to create new traditions and stuff like that the girls can look forward to, and hopefully add some things they can think about a little bit more, too, so they go home a better hockey player and hopefully a better person. 

Patch: You mentioned your dad, what was it like coaching against him? 

Darwitz: Yeah, it was interesting. Obviously knowing the Eagan kids pretty well—I worked with them in the summertime—and then just being on the opposite bench as my dad, it’s a pretty strange feeling. I would not be in the position I am as a person and as a player—now as a coach—without my father’s help. I’m really lucky to have him. So to be going against him is a little weird.

We played well that game and we caught Eagan on an off night. But I can tell you when we meet again in January, I’m sure they won’t have an off night. It’ll probably up the ante a little bit the second time around playing them and knowing what we did to them last time. I’m sure it doesn’t sit well with those kids over in that locker room, as well as with my dad. It’s competitive, but it’s fun.