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<\/p>\nIt was a stunning and improbable run to the U Sports national tournament to cap off Brett Gibson\u2019s 20th season at the helm of the Queen\u2019s Gaels men\u2019s hockey program. But perhaps even more stunning is the fact that it would be his last.<\/p>\n
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This week, the Queen\u2019s men\u2019s hockey coach decided to step down.<\/p>\n
It was an announcement that caught many in Canadian university hockey circles by surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI missed too much time away from my family,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the biggest love of my life. Hockey\u2019s always secondary. So I just wanted to make sure I was a dad first and foremost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibson walks away from the Gaels having brought the program to the national tournament four times, including one OUA Queen\u2019s Cup championship.<\/p>\n
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But it was a long road to get there.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor the first 10 years, it seemed so far away and so in the distance,\u201d he said, adding how in the summer months he was always thinking, \u201cHow do I get this team to a national championship level? If you weren\u2019t around 20 years ago. The program is night and day, what it was, and I take great pride.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of what got him there was his approach. Gibson says that over the years, he became more of a player-centric coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that my job was to do a service \u2026 to help these players get to the best of their ability, and, in order to do that, I had to have their buy-in as well,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cSo there was more communication, there was more relationship building.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He says what finally got them over the hump was their ability to recruit top-tier university-aged players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when I took over the program, my goal was to get one major junior player, and by the end, my roster had 26 or 27.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibson says he\u2019s not done with the role just yet. In fact, he\u2019s still busy courting recruits and hopes to be part of the process to select his successor.<\/p>\n
And although he\u2019s stepping away from the Gaels, he\u2019s not stepping away from hockey.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m going to coach my son this year coming up and give back to him, and I\u2019m going to spend more time coaching my daughter for a year \u2026 so it\u2019s nice, but I am just going to sit back and be a dad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a stunning and improbable run to the U Sports national tournament to cap off Brett Gibson\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[79433,10585,67,9,24,63,79434,122,124,123,319,79435],"class_list":{"0":"post-199935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-brett-gibson","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-queens-gaels-hockey","15":"tag-queens","16":"tag-queens-headlines","17":"tag-queens-news","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-u-sports-mens-hockey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}