If you were lucky enough to attend an OMEGA (Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts — the 1990s were the peak of goofy wrestling acronyms) wrestling show in a North Carolina armory in the late ’90s, you would’ve seen a roster full of wrestlers who went on to big-league success. The promotion was run by […]
If you were lucky enough to attend an OMEGA (Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts — the 1990s were the peak of goofy wrestling acronyms) wrestling show in a North Carolina armory in the late ’90s, you would’ve seen a roster full of wrestlers who went on to big-league success.
The promotion was run by The Hardy Boyz, future WWE Hall of Famers Jeff and Matt, but also likely performing would be Kid Dynamo (Shannon Moore, who’d wrestle in WCW, WWE and TNA), Ice (Caprice Coleman, who’d have a long run in ROH and is currently their color commentator), Kid Vicious (Shane Helms, who’d wrestle in WCW and as The Hurricane in WWE), and Joey Matthews (who’d hold one half of the WWE tag-team title as a member of MNM). You could’ve also seen wrestlers who had shorter runs in major federations like Venom (Jason Arndt, who’d wrestle as Joey Abs in the WWE), or Mike Maverick and Otto Schwanz (who’d work as The Dupps in ECW and in WWE developmental).
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However, despite all that future star power, another lesser-known name would often steal the show.
“If you don’t know me, my name is Cham Pain — that is, first name Cham, last name Pain. I’m a former male exotic dancer from Las Vegas, Nevada, who’s traded his g-string for the wrestling ring. I’ve been around the world twice, I’ve seen everything but the wind, and I’ve been everywhere but the electric chair. I’ve been to two state fairs and I have driven through hell in a gasoline truck in reverse with my hair on fire, wearing thermal underwear and a fur coat, with a big, red sign hanging out the window that says, ‘Cham Pain is the freakin’ man.’”
“Cham Pain” Marty Garner was the one who was left behind.
Despite being arguably the most charismatic of the original OMEGA crew, and as talented in-ring as any of them, many only know of Garner from his retroactively viral Pedigree sell against Triple H in 1996 (which was just uploaded to the WWE Vault in perfect video quality). But in many ways, he is the Zelig of professional wrestling, touching its history in multiple, fascinating ways. Unlike many of his celebrated peers, Garner’s career was more about near-misses and brushes with fame, viral clips, movie stars and burned bridges. Now, at a time when the majority of his old running mates are either retired or winding down their careers, “Cham Pain” has returned to wrestling to take one last swing at the plate.
Matt Hardy first met Garner in a fitness center in Vass, North Carolina, in the early ’90s. Matt and his brother had built a makeshift wrestling ring in their backyard and had begun running shows. “They had black plastic, wrapped around trees and they made an arena out of the plastic,” Garner, 58, tells Uncrowned, “and in the middle they had a trampoline with garden hoses wrapped around it for the ropes. They would film the matches, and they would make a tape and sell it to the local video store — and they would rent the video out.” The crew eventually leveled up from the backyard to the local fair. “We did our first show at the fair on a regular ring with about five people,” Garner recalls, “and we would put on hoods for some matches and some matches we would be ourselves.”
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Eventually, this group of North Carolina teenagers began achieving bigger success in the wrestling business, being used as enhancement talent for the WWF. “May of 1994 we went to the WWF, The Italian Stallion [Gary Sabaugh] called me and said he needed four guys to come fill in,” Matt Hardy says. “The four of us — Jeff, myself, Jason Arndt and Marty — would drive wherever they were wrestling and we did jobs there.
“Stallion’s students got upset that the Omega crew were getting picked to work the matches even though they were paying Stallion and we weren’t. So we just talked to [WWE Hall of Famer] Chief Jay Strongbow and told him what they were doing. ‘If you want us, you can just call me and I can book us.’ And that is how we broke away and built a relationship with the people in the WWE.”
Garner achieved his first big viral moment in June 1996, when he wrestled Paul Levesque, aka Triple H. The future WWE chief executive hit his trademark Pedigree, but instead of bumping on his face, Garner kicked his legs straight in the air like he was taking a piledriver and ended up getting dropped vertically, straight onto his neck. It’s a clip that still pops up on Twitter nearly two decades later, and one that demonstrates the wild recklessness that became a calling card for Garner and the rest of the OMEGA crew.
In another retroactively viral clip, Garner attempted a running plancha on Jeff Jarrett and totally whiffed, crashing onto his head when Jarrett side-stepped him.
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With some visibility from television, the crew began getting booked by other independent promotions and running its own shows, creating OMEGA and putting on displays that became legendary on the nascent wrestling internet and tape-trading scene. One by one, the OMEGA guys got signed to bigger promotions. First The Hardy Boyz joined the WWF, then Moore and Helms became two-thirds of 3 Count in WCW. Arndt joined Heartland Championship Wrestling (then WWE’s development) as Venom and eventually the WWE as Joey Abs of the Mean Street Posse. Garner briefly joined the dying days of ECW as Puck Dupp, managing and teaming with fellow OMEGA alumni Mike Maverick and Otto Schwanz as Jack and Bo Dupp. The ECW stint was short-lived though, as Garner really wanted to be in the WWE. But while the WWE took Jack and Bo Dupp into developmental, Puck was left on the outside looking in.
The cocky charisma that made Cham Pain such a compelling wrestler to watch may have caused him some difficulty in the notoriously prickly and political WWE locker room. “I was just hard-headed,” Garner admits. “I wouldn’t listen to people. I wasn’t trying to be arrogant, I tried to ride my own road and it didn’t work out.”
“Marty saw his friends on TV, and we all loved him so much, and he didn’t get that opportunity and he got discouraged,” adds Matt Hardy.
That classic Cham Pain charisma, though, did make an impression on one big star.
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Marty was in Los Angeles in late 2002 doing motion capture stunts for a video game company and ended up connecting with The Rock, who was in town shooting “The Rundown.”
“We went out to the movie set, and as soon as The Rock saw me, he says, ‘First name Cham, last name Pain — a former male exotic dancer who ended up trading his g-string for the wrestling ring,’” Garner says. “He knew my whole spiel. We go out to dinner and he said, ‘Look, I want to tell you guys something. I didn’t take my lines from Cham Pain, but I like the way he presented to the crowd, I kind of took some of his style, I loved the way he did his spiel.’ I just about teared up. This was The Rock saying he took something from me.” The two ended up going out on the town the next night. “I met Turbo from the movie ‘Breaking,’ I met Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake,” Garner recalls.
“I am thinking to myself, ‘I am from Vass, North Carolina, with a population of 758 people. I am drinking Cristal with The Rock and Britney Spears.’”
After catching up with The Rock again at WrestleMania 19 in 2003, Garner returned to Vass and got a call.
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“Look, man, you ain’t never asked me for nothing, you have always been my friend, so I am going to ask you for something — do you want to come work for me for a while on a movie set?”
Garner spent the next two years off and on traveling the world as The Rock’s assistant. “When I got the job,” he remembers, “Rock said this isn’t going to last forever, I just want you to have some fun.” Eventually, the ride had to come to an end. “The Rock told me, ‘My wife is on me about us going out to clubs and stuff and wanted to know what your job actually is,” Garner says, “‘and I don’t think she dug it.” So Garner again went back to Vass. “I just got off an airplane where I was eating caviar and a ribeye steak,” he says, “and here I am, walking into a single-wide trailer, and all I could smell was chicken crap.”
After his Hollywood rock-star stage came to an end, Garner made another run at professional wrestling. He began working North Carolina independents again and got back on the WWE radar, working some dark matches from 2006-08 and even getting a pay-per-view match against a then-debuting Montel Vontavious Porter.
“I went up to Johnny Laurinaitis and asked him what I need to do to get a job,” Garner explains. “He said, ‘I don’t think we can make you any money in the WWE, you need to make a name for yourself.’
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“I decided to make a blog. This was back in the MySpace days and I would call it ‘The Forgotten Beatle,’ and it got picked up by a bunch of the wrestling sites, a magazine in the UK did a big article on me. After that article, people started a ‘Hire Cham Pain’ campaign together. I got to a show in Charlotte and got to the parking deck and there was ‘Hire Cham Pain’ all over the car. They were in England and there was a sign that was six feet long. Johnny Laurinaitis calls me and says, ‘My personal email is getting blown up, 300 or 400 emails a day wanting me to hire you. I don’t ever want to see you again. If you come into a WWE locker room again, I will have you arrested.’
“You told me to make a name for myself, so I did — and I got punished for it. So after that, I got out of the business.”
Garner returned to Vass once more and put wrestling behind him, leaving the ring for over a decade. However, the same wild man who made The Rock’s wife nervous is no longer who Marty Garner is.
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He is married, with two daughters. “I wanted my little girls to see me wrestle live,” Garner says. “I went to an independent show and got the fever again.” He had a cameo appearance in a Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Jarrett match at WrestleCade, taking a guitar shot from Jeff. That appearance — and him dropping his famous Cham Pain catchphrases during an OMEGA reunion at the same event — led to a 2023 booking at GCW, where he showed he could still hang with youngsters. He lost a competitive match with Cole Raderick, but a lot of the athleticism and timing that made him a success in his OMEGA days was still present. “I don’t tell my mind I can’t do it,” he says. “I just assume I can do everything I used to do. I just go ahead and try it.”
Reinvigorated, Garner continued grinding, working shows across North Carolina, doing what he loves, until an injury put him back on the shelf for a bit. “I had a knock-down, drag-out match with this dude — man, it was awesome,” he says. “And we did a bunch of high spots. I dove out into the crowd on him, did a front flip over the top rope. We were doing a bull-rope match — I wanted him to jerk me off the top rope, and when he did, I wanted to fall a different kind of way and I kind of messed myself up. I broke my collarbone and my rib on that last move he gave me. I’ve got to heal, man, and just get right.”
Always a hustler, Garner is judging boxing and MMA fights in the meantime while working on getting an OMEGA documentary made. He still thinks he has something to give the business. “I can talk, man,” he says. “Even today, I would take a managerial job for somebody. I would be their mouthpiece, because man, I’ve got stuff I know that would get over. I could give them five T-shirt [slogans] that would sell.”
“Marty is someone who just loves to entertain people, and he is destined to entertain people,” Matt Hardy says. “I would love to see him get some of that pro-wrestling success he didn’t get earlier in his career.”
And these are a few of Olivia “Livvy” Dunne’s favorite things. While cheering on her beloved Tigers Saturday at the Men’s College World Series in Omaha, the former LSU gymnast-turned-Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model rocked a custom jersey that paid tribute to her alma mater and her boyfriend, fellow LSU alum and reigning NL Rookie […]
And these are a few of Olivia “Livvy” Dunne’s favorite things.
While cheering on her beloved Tigers Saturday at the Men’s College World Series in Omaha, the former LSU gymnast-turned-Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model rocked a custom jersey that paid tribute to her alma mater and her boyfriend, fellow LSU alum and reigning NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes.
Taking to her Instagram Stories, Dunne — who boasts more than 13 million followers across Instagram and TikTok — showed off her split jersey that recognized the Tigers on the front and Skenes’ Pirates on the back.
“Party in the front business in the back,” the 22-year-old New Jersey native captioned a selfie, which highlighted the star pitcher’s No. 30 jersey number.
Dunne — whose relationship with Skenes, 23, was revealed in 2023, the same year he and the Tigers captured the College World Series title — had one of the best views in the house at Charles Schwab Field, where LSU defeated Arkansas, 4-1.
LSU advanced in the winner’s bracket with the victory and will face UCLA on Monday night.
“I am so happy geaux tigers,” Dunne exclaimed in a separate Instagram Story on Saturday.
It’s certainly been a spring to remember for Dunne, who was announced as one of the four Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover stars for the 2025 edition of the iconic publication, along with Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, actress Salma Hayek and entrepreneur Lauren Chan.
Dunne, just two years removed from her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit debut, shot what became the cover photo in Bermuda while nursing a knee injury.
“Fun fact, I was shooting on a fractured kneecap, so poses like this and the cover shot kind of hurt, but it was honestly so worth it,” Dunne said in an Instagram video recapping the whirlwind shoot.
Elsewhere this year, Dunne bid farewell to gymnastics after her collegiate career came to an end in April. She won a national championship with LSU last year.
“You will always be my first love,” Dunne said in an emotional tribute video.
“Time did fly by, and I will cherish every memory for the rest of my life.”
As Dunne chases new dreams in this next chapter, she’s also supporting Skenes as he lives out his.
The Pirates’ first-overall pick in 2023, Skenes was officially called up to the majors in May 2024 and struck out seven in his debut.
Although Skenes has posted an ERA of 1.78 across 15 games, the Pirates sit in last place in the NL Central at 29-43.
Skenes is slated to pitch Sunday to close out Pittsburgh’s four-game series against the Cubs.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Fisk University’s bold experiment in women’s gymnastics is coming to an end. The school has announced it is shuttering the program at the end of the 2026 season. Fisk made history in 2023 when it became the first historically Black college or university to launch a women’s artistic gymnastics team. Fisk’s ambitious […]
NASHVILLE (AP) — Fisk University’s bold experiment in women’s gymnastics is coming to an end.
The school has announced it is shuttering the program at the end of the 2026 season. Fisk made history in 2023 when it became the first historically Black college or university to launch a women’s artistic gymnastics team.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
9 Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp 17Shares Samara Buchanan, Bella Miller, Kielyn McCright, Jessica Naranjo and Haylen Zarbowski. Parkland has become a hot spot for another sport, with five gymnastics stars competing in college. Kielyn McCright is a 2020 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She began her college career at Utah State before transferring to […]
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Samara Buchanan, Bella Miller, Kielyn McCright, Jessica Naranjo and Haylen Zarbowski.
Parkland has become a hot spot for another sport, with five gymnastics stars competing in college.
Kielyn McCright is a 2020 graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She began her college career at Utah State before transferring to Clemson University. She finished her senior year by making the ACC All-Tournament Team (Beam). McCright previously competed in the NCAA Tournament in 2024 and set a season-high 9.875 at the ACC Championships earlier this year after missing six matches due to injury.
Bella Miller also graduated from MSD in 2020 and did not compete her first two years, but did get named to the EAGL All-Scholastic Team and ACC Academic Honor Roll at the University of North Carolina. She has a career best of 9.875 on the floor and 9.725
Jessica Naranjo, who also attends UNC, was named to the All-ACC Championship Team on beam as a freshman, competing in 11 beats and three bar lineups. She was also named to the All-ACC Academic Team and a WCGA Scholastic All-American. She ranks fourth all-time with a score of 9.825 on the beam and also earned scores of 9.85 against Kentucky and 9.925 against LSU.
Haylen Zarbowski graduated from MSD in 2022 and has been competing for the University of Michigan. During her Freshman season, she set a career best on the uneven bars with a 9.825 at Oklahoma. Zarbowski went on to compete in seven meets as a sophomore, with six appearances on uneven bars and two on the floor, setting a personal record with a score of .9775 on the floor at Michigan State.
Samara Buchanan attends Ohio State University and made her Buckeye debut on the uneven bars, recording a GA score of 9.725. She competed in three meets for Ohio State as a freshman after being a 2022 Florida State Champion on beam, vault, uneven bars, and all-around.
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Justin Cousin is back at Graham, this time as the basketball coach. By Bob Sutton Special to The Alamance News Justin Cousin was bothered when he heard about the decline in fortunes for many of Graham’s sports teams, particularly boys’ basketball. Now the school’s all-time leading scorer will have a chance to do something about […]
By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Justin Cousin was bothered when he heard about the decline in fortunes for many of Graham’s sports teams, particularly boys’ basketball.
Now the school’s all-time leading scorer will have a chance to do something about that.
Cousin, a 2012 graduate, has been hired as the school’s next coach.
“The timing was perfect,” he said. “It’s good that I can be the one to get the ball rolling and turn the tide around here. Graham hasn’t had the success that we’ve had in the past, so I want to be the one to come help change that.”
Earlier this century, Graham had some powerhouse teams playing in front of capacity crowds. Those are what Cousin remembers fondly.
“It still smells the same. It still looks the same,” he said during an interview in the gym lobby. “Full-circle moment for sure.”
Cousin played under coach Mike Williams at Graham, racking up 1,997 points in high school and then spent a season in the Air Force Academy’s prep school before five seasons in Radford’s program. His final college game was in the 2018 NCAA Tournament against Villanova in Pittsburgh. From there, he played professionally in New Zealand.
“I had been running from coaching for a long time because I knew once I got into coaching that would mean my playing career was over,” he said.
He didn’t return overseas because of the pandemic. Instead, he helped coach with his father’s Mid-State Magic travel program, reconnecting with college coaches who were recruiting at those tournaments.
That led to a graduate assistant position at Radford and from there he spent two seasons in a similar role at Georgia, where he earned a master’s degree in nonprofit management and leadership. During the 2024-25 season, he was the assistant coach with Wabash Valley College, a two-year school in Mount Carmel, Illinois.
He learned about the opening at Graham, which had multiple coaches the past few seasons.
“When I was out in Illinois, one of the parents of one of the guys on the team reached out to me,” he said. “I had been praying for an opportunity to come closer to home. I guess that was the answer to my prayer.
“It doesn’t get closer to home than home.”
His hiring at Graham was approved earlier this spring, but he needed to finish commitments at Wabash Valley College through May. He also mourned for his grandmother, Joann Cousin, who died May 27.
“She was my biggest fan here back when I played,” he said.
Looking for a turnaround
Graham’s basketball troubles included a 2-20 record during the past season. That marked the seventh season in a row that the Red Devils haven’t exceeded the eight-win level.
“Every time I come home and talk about high school sports, we’ve been at the bottom,” Cousin said. “And I don’t like that for my alma mater.”
Graham athletics director Kyle Ward, a former girls’ and boys’ basketball coach, said Cousin’s deep roots in the program should be a plus.
“We’re hoping he can turn it around,” Ward said.
The new coach’s father, Rod Cousin, has been recovering from a stroke, but he wants to lend a hand with the Red Devils.
Further, Justin Cousin said it would be ideal for past Graham basketball players to become involved with the program and help boost morale and connections with players.
“I feel like it’s a great time for greats from the past to come through and impart their knowledge on to the next generation,” he said.
Cousin, 31, will take a to-be-determined teaching position at Graham. He said he wants players to see him at times when they’re not in the gym to cultivate relationships.
“I would like to be super hands-on, and I would like to see the guys during the day,” he said. “I feel like as a coach it’s important for your players to see your duality. If they only saw how intense I was and how demanding I was on the court, it would be harder for them to accept me and to know that I really have their best interests at heart and that I care for them. It’s important for them to see that second side of me.”
Jake Gustafson has a pretty typical hockey origin story. His father grew up in Canada and was a hockey player. After retiring, Jon Gustafson settled in San Jose and built a post-playing career in the sport, rising to Vice President of the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda and one of the largest hockey-focused facilities in the […]
Jake Gustafson has a pretty typical hockey origin story.
His father grew up in Canada and was a hockey player. After retiring, Jon Gustafson settled in San Jose and built a post-playing career in the sport, rising to Vice President of the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda and one of the largest hockey-focused facilities in the country — Sharks Ice.
The younger Gustafson developed as a youth hockey player in San Jose and committed to play at his dad’s alma mater, Colorado College. Then, last month, something happened that, until now, would have signaled the end of his future as a college hockey player.
On May 13, Gustafson signed with the Portland WinterHawks of the Western Hockey League. And he did so with the blessing of Colorado College’s hockey staff. Gustafson will join the WinterHawks for this coming season and the next, but he’s still committed to arrive in Colorado Springs in the fall of 2027.
College athletics has seen massive changes across all sports in recent years — a temporary extra year of eligibility for athletes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of the transfer portal, and Name, Image and Likeness financial commitments. Revenue sharing is coming in just a few weeks.
But the college hockey landscape felt another seismic event in November. The NCAA Division I council voted to make Canadian Hockey League players eligible, effective Aug. 1.
“We have more really good hockey players available to us,” Colorado College coach Kris Mayotte said. “With an influx of talent — I mean, college hockey is going to be more talented than it’s ever been, and it’s not even going to be close, I don’t think — how much does it change roster composition in terms of winning championships and being the best team in your league?
“I think that’s what’s still so unknown.”
For decades, players have had to choose between the CHL, which comprises the top three junior leagues (WHL, OHL, QMJHL) in Canada, and NCAA hockey. That decision often had to be made when the player was 14 or 15 years old, even with college 3-4 years away.
Suiting up for a CHL team made a player ineligible for NCAA hockey. That changed with this ruling.
Gustafson is part of the first crop of players who can choose both. When Avalanche star Cale Makar decided to forego playing in the WHL in favor of college hockey at UMass, he spent two seasons with the Brooks Bandits in the AJHL, which is the second tier of Canadian junior hockey.
This ruling will change development paths all over North America. There will be plenty of uncertainty in the short term, which mirrors how the transfer portal and NIL have changed college sports.
But there can be positive long-term benefits as well.
“I think it provides more opportunities for youth players,” said Jordan Pietrus, Hockey Director for the Colorado Thunderbirds youth program. “Now, they don’t have to make a decision at 14 years old in Colorado to say, ‘Yes, I want to go to the Western league or not.’ Now they can say yes to everything and see what opportunities are available. From that perspective, I think it’s really, really positive.”
Players like Gustafson or kids currently in the Thunderbirds program will have more time to see how the new landscape develops, but the November ruling drastically altered how 2025-26 NCAA teams will be constructed.
While college teams have typically earned commitments from youth players years in advance, there was suddenly a flood of new players available and far less time to recruit them.
“It’s playing out in real time, and it’s been a little clunky here and there, but for the most part, I think it’s been pretty smooth,” DU coach David Carle said. “There’s never been more ways or avenues to build your roster. That started with the portal and then obviously the CHL player eligibility. So there’s a lot more players within the marketplace.”
Carle said last month that he expects to have between eight and 10 freshmen on his roster next season. His staff didn’t waste any time dipping into the new player pool.
The captains for Everett (Eric Jamieson) and Swift Current (Clark Caswell) from this past season both committed to join the Pioneers in August — a statement that would’ve read like a foreign language to college hockey fans before eight months ago.
Kyle Chyzowski, who scored 41 goals and 105 points in 66 regular-season games for Portland, is committed to joining them. The two goalies who will compete to replace program legend Matt Davis? Both have CHL experience.
Down I-25, Mayotte and the Tigers are excited for their incoming group of newcomers as well. The leading scorer for Prince Albert this past season, Tomas Mrsic, is one of multiple NHL draft picks in CC’s incoming class.
How this influx of older, more accomplished freshmen will affect college hockey remains a mystery. This ruling could open the door for a few more first-round picks who chose the CHL to spend a season or two in college, but it goes deeper than that.
“I know we’re getting really good hockey players, and probably as good as we’ve ever gotten type of hockey players, but so is everybody else,” Mayotte said. “What’s that going to look like in terms of, how do you become one of the best teams in college hockey?
“I think the ceiling is going up, but I think the floor is getting closer to the ceiling. I think the floor is rising at a faster rate. If you add 5-10 more of those (high draft picks across college hockey), how much of a difference is that versus the fact that you’re going to add 150 more 19-20-year-olds that are really good hockey players?”
Just like the extra “Covid” year and the transfer portal, the effects of CHL eligibility go beyond just a stream of new talent available to the 64 Division I programs.
Some players who were committed to those programs for next season have had find a new place to play. The USHL has been the top source of NCAA players from the junior ranks, while those tier two leagues in Canada like the AJHL and BCHL have also been strong pipelines.
Now, those leagues will have to compete with the CHL teams for youth players who can still go to college.
“I think you’ll see guys bounce around all over and find the place that they think is best for their development,” Mayotte said. “I think that’s one of the best things that options create, is it allows the player to do what’s best and not just have one option that they feel like they have to take or else their career is in jeopardy.
“I think you’ll see teams in all leagues that know how to develop players, how to resource development — those programs will thrive no matter what league they’re in.”
When the new coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins got his first assistant’s job in the National Hockey League, Dan Muse was quick to credit the year he spent at Williams College as the jumping-off-point for his career. “I loved every second of it,” Muse said back in 2017. “That was my first job working in […]
When the new coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins got his first assistant’s job in the National Hockey League, Dan Muse was quick to credit the year he spent at Williams College as the jumping-off-point for his career.
“I loved every second of it,” Muse said back in 2017. “That was my first job working in college hockey, period. The opportunity that Bill Kangas gave me was one that I’ll be forever grateful for.”
Muse, whose first coaching job was as an assistant at Williams for the 2007-08 season, was introduced to the Pittsburgh media Wednesday morning as the new coach of the team led by Sidney Crosby.
“I was excited. Obviously happy for him and his family, and well-deserved,” Kangas said in a phone interview with The Eagle this week. “He’s done so many things in the game at all different levels. He’s done very, very well. He’s a driven person and a wonderful human being. He cares about people and I think it shows in how the players feel about him because he’s so good with his time with everyone.
“He’s a true teacher. Your favorite teacher, I guess, and you want to go back to school and say hi when you’re in town. He’s that kind of guy.”
The newest NHL coach graduated from Stonehill College, then a Division III school. He came to Williams after some time as a history teacher at Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree. Muse spent time at Division I Sacred Heart and Yale, before taking over as the head coach of the Chicago team in the U.S. Hockey League, one of the top junior hockey leagues in America.
Muse joined the Nashville Predators in 2017 and spent three years there working for Peter Laviolette. After Laviolette and his staff were let go, Muse hooked on as an assistant coach and a head coach for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. There, as the head coach of the U-18 team, he set a record with 15 wins over Division I hockey programs. He also mentored current NHL standout Logan Cooley and Amherst native Ryan Leonard.
The coach rejoined Laviolette for the 2023-24 season, and was with the NHL team until the New York Rangers fired their head coach.
The fact that Muse ended up in Pittsburgh is a bit of a coincidence because Mike Sullivan, who was let go by the Penguins, is the new head coach of the Rangers.
“For me, all these experiences, you take and you work to apply them,” Muse said during his introductory news conference. “I feel extremely fortunate for all the steps along the way. It’s the places I’ve worked, the people I’ve worked with, the people I’ve learned from. It’s having an opportunity to work in pretty close to almost every roll you can imagine — second assistant, first assistant, video coach, head coach — on my way coming up.
“You’re taking all the different things I’ve seen, the different things I’ve learned, the different things I’ve done. Some things that along the way maybe have changed. Now you’re getting an opportunity to apply them in this league.”
Muse’s first boss said he has no doubt that the new Penguins coach will be a success.
“When he was with me, you could tell he really had it,” Kangas told The Eagle. “He was so committed to the group, to his own process. I didn’t know what he wanted and I’m not sure I envisioned him as an NHL head coach. I think he probably envisioned himself being a head coach of some sort. Every opportunity he’s had to be a head coach, he’s been successful.”
Muse spent one year at Williams and helped Kangas lead the Ephs to a 9-12-4 record. They were 7-8-4 in NESCAC play and earned the No. 7 seed in the postseason tournament.
The foundation Kangas and Muse put down in the 07-08 season helped the next year as Williams went 15-9-2 and 12-5-2 in the conference. The Ephs were the No. 3 seed in the NESCAC Tournament and advanced to the tournament semifinal round.
Muse left Williams in 2008 to become an assistant at Division I Sacred Heart. A year later, he went to work for Keith Allain at Yale. Muse stayed at Yale until 2015. He was the associate head coach when he took the job with the U.S.H.L. team in Chicago.
The Bulldogs won the 2013 NCAA Division I hockey championship with Muse on the bench for Allain. Coincidentally, that championship was won at what is now PPG Paints Arena, the home of Muse’s new team.
Several of Kangas’ former assistants have moved to Division I jobs. Nate Skidmore is an assistant at Niagara, Eric Sorenson is an assistant at UMass Lowell while Dana Borges is an assistant coach and handles player development at Arizona State. Another former assistant, Mike Monti, who was the head coach when Kangas took a one-year sabbatical, is the video coach for the American Hockey League’s Cleveland Monsters. The Monsters are the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Muse is now the second person off of a recent Williams roster to reach the NHL. Mark Yanetti, a defenseman who graduated in 1994, and was a second-team All-American, has spent the last 18 years in the Los Angeles Kings’ front office. He is currently the senior director of amateur scouting.
“I tell people now all the time … younger guys getting into coaching, if somebody has any questions for me,” Muse told The Eagle back in 2017. “I’ll always say if you can get an opportunity to coach Division III for a year, it’s one of the best things you can do starting out. It’s a smaller staff and especially at programs like Williams, you get to do everything. You’re forced to do everything.
“You’re forced to jump into the water with both feet.”
|#Shorts
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