Macho nearing 300th victory

NEW ULM -- When the New Ulm High boys hockey team blanked Waseca 5-0 Tuesday night in South Central Conference play, it moved the Eagles to 5-0 in the SCC and all but assured New Ulm of their fourth straight SCC ice crown.

It also moved New Ulm to a 12-1 mark on the season, with their only loss of the year coming to state-ranked Blake.

But more impressive than anything is that the Eagles 12th win of the season moved head coach Tom Macho to within three wins of 300 career victories in his 26 years at the helm.

While hockey people in New Ulm are looking for when Macho collects that magical 300th, he has not spent a lot of time on the subject.

"I have not had many thoughts about it," commented Macho, the only head hockey coach that New Ulm High has had since its genesis in 1976.

"As you go on every year, you just go game by game and I guess that all of a sudden, it happens," he said. "The first thought that I have (about the 300 wins) is longevity. I am amazed that I had made it that many years and you get that only because you have lasted that many years. All the years past never seemed like a long time."

Macho said that when he started coaching the Eagles in their infancy of high school hockey, the thought of himself coaching for 26 years never crossed his mind.

"I had been with the amateur (hockey) program when we started it a few years before that," he remembers. "We just wanted to see if we could try and get the high school hockey program going but it never was a thought to be around that many years. Once we got high school hockey, there was again never any thought about how long I would be around."

And starting up that high school hockey program in New Ulm saw the team hold all of their practices outside.

'We went seven years (before Vogel Arena was built) of practicing mostly outside and all of our games were played at Gustavus," he said. But even that was not like Vogel Arena would be.

"Gustavus Arena at that time only had a roof and one of the sides was wide open," Macho said. "So it was just like an outdoor arena."

Macho said that in the early days, getting the players to practice outside was not hard. "We never missed a day," he said. "Doug Gulden and some of the early players are still around and still in the program will tell you that we went right on through from the second week in December and were able to practice every day outside."

But Macho, who saw his first team go 17-2 on the season, said that the "cold days for practice were difficult. Tom Steinbach (who holds the record for goals in a season with 47 and is third in career hat tricks with 11) was our early barometer. On any day that it was below 20 degrees, it took 11 minutes for his toes to get frozen. So we would practice 11 minutes and go in and warm up for 10 minutes and then go out and practice again for 11 minutes. Our practices lasted about three hours, but we would only practice about 1 1/2 hours in that time."

Macho said that in his years as head coach, he has had a number of great players beginning with the Steinbach boys, Tim, Terry and Tom. What many people do not know is that Terry is the all-time leading career goal scorer at NUHS with 109 goals.

"There were a lot of players that stick out in my mind from that early era," he said. "Tom Steinbach had the quickest release of a shot that I have ever seen ... his wrists were as good as anybody's.

"Terry was tenacious and Jeff Schugel (now assistant to the General Manager with the Los Angeles Dodgers) was an acrobat in the net," he said. "You go down the line and there is Dayton Larson; he was the purest goal scorer that I have ever seen. Scott Macho was probably the best defenseman that we have had and there is Aaron Allen. Those names are synonymous with great athletes in New Ulm."

Macho remembers several games that stick out in his mind. "One is playing Rochester Mayo in only our third year of existence as a high school team and beating them in Owatonna. That was a big victory. The games that we have had with Rochester Lourdes over the years and the one where we beat them 6-2 to qualify for the state tournament."

And Macho was on the committee that moved the high school hockey tournament from one class to a two-tier system.

"There were five of us (on the committee) and at first, we were told that we cannot mess around with that tournament," he said. "The hockey purists were not really for it at first, but as you go over the years with the two-class the fans can get into it. We would have had the Rochesters, Burnsvilles, Bloomington Jefferson in our section; we could not compete with them. But now with two class system, you can. We don't get 200 people to play high school hockey. But with the two-class system, there is a light at the end of the tunnel in a trip to the state tournament. Now, this can be one of our goals."

Macho's record in his 26 years shows that he has been consistent as head coach, showing only 10 sub-.500 seasons in those years -- none since 1992.

"That is a tribute to the talent here in New Ulm," he said. "In those years, we have had only one player (Chris Reinarts this year) who is not from New Ulm play for us. Now, we are getting a winning tradition in our own building and it is nice to see that success. There has been talent here. Almost every town that I go to, there is someone who has played hockey in New Ulm that is now coaching somewhere. A lot of our assistant coaches who have coached here are assistant coaches around the state and college coaches. It is neat that a lot of that talent has gone on to that success."

Macho will tell you that one of his biggest supporters in the years of coaching has been and still is his wife, Marilyn.

"She has done a lot; she has taken the tickets for every home game since 1976 ... she is right there all the time," he said. "When Scott was a baby, she would put him in a harness and still take tickets. But you add to that the times that I was with the high school team and she had to take the kids to games driving all over the state of Minnesota. Plus, she makes coffee and cookies each game. Most off all, she has been a supporter of me in good times and bad. She is my No. 1 assistant."

Macho said that he does not know how long he will coach as the Eagles gun for their 10th Central Minnesota Conference crown. "I guess that I will keep coaching until it is not fun nymore. But right now, it is fun."

How will Macho react when he gets his 300th career win?

"I've never thought about it," he said. "I guess that I will be happy for the kids."

Column by Jim Bastian, Journal sports writer