Played1981NAIA National ChampionsAugsburg
Played1982NAIA National ChampionsAugsburg
Coached1986Alaska State ChampionsLathrop High School
Coached1998MIAC Champions · NCAA Final FourAugsburg
Honored2019MN Coaches Hall of FameMinnesota

The banners are his. The next ones are yours.

Eastwood Hockey builds better coaches for youth hockey associations — clinics, program assessments, and season-long mentoring from a coach who has stood on every bench between a Fairbanks high school and an NCAA Final Four.

Book a first clinic See the services

USA Hockey Coach Developer 1–4
Master Level 5
Since 1995 national clinician
Two-time national champion, Augsburg

The gap in the program

Your association develops players. Nobody develops your coaches.

Most youth associations are run by volunteer boards. Most coaches are parents who played the game but were never taught how to teach it. The USA Hockey modules cover the baseline. They don’t cover a playing-time conversation with an angry dad, a locker room going sideways in January, or a coach who is quietly drowning while nobody on the board knows how to bring it up.

Eastwood Hockey works for the board and the hockey director — the people accountable for coach quality across a whole program, without the time or the outside judgment to build it alone.

The work always comes back to the same two things: getting players to think the game differently, and teaching coaches how to prepare. Everything else is detail.

Very few people advising a youth association have coached mites, high school, junior, college, and the pro game. That is the whole difference.

Kids and parents skating on a boarded backyard rink on a winter afternoon — Where most of them start. Somebody has to teach the person running the practice.

What you can hang in your own rafters

Five ways to work together

Start small. Grow into a deeper engagement as trust builds. Every price is a starting point, not a quote.

Single Clinic or Workshop
Half or full day with your coaching staff — practice planning, age-appropriate teaching, parent communication, team culture. In person or virtual.
from $1,800
Association Coaching Assessment
A structured review of your coaching program — practice observation, staff and parent interviews, and a written report the board can act on.
from $3,500
Season-Long Mentoring
Coach mentorship across a season — monthly check-ins, on-ice visits, and a direct line for your hockey director when a situation needs outside judgment.
from $1,000/mo
Custom Curriculum or Program Build
Purpose-built programs — new-coach onboarding, a culture and character curriculum, or an association-specific coaching guide.
from $4,000
Keynote & Speaking
Talks for banquets, coach kickoffs, and district clinics — preparation, character, and what forty years behind a bench actually teaches you.
from $1,200

Travel and lodging quoted separately. Every engagement is scoped in writing before it begins.

Players and coaches gathered at center ice at TRIA Rink after an on-ice session

USA Hockey national clinician since 1995 — still on the ice, still running the sessions himself.

Think the game. Then prepare for it.

Two banners as a player taught him what the other ones cost.

Michael R. Schwartz won NAIA national championships at Augsburg in 1981 and 1982. Fourteen years later he came back as head coach and took the same program to the 1998 MIAC title and the NCAA Division III Final Four in Plattsburgh, New York. National Coach of the Year that season.

Preparation isn’t the practice plan. It’s knowing what you want a fourteen-year-old to be thinking about at the blue line — and building backward from there.

Before all of it: a K–12 physical education degree, and years as an elementary and secondary PE teacher and athletic director. That’s why the teaching lands with a squirt team and with a varsity staff. In 1986 he coached Lathrop High School in Fairbanks to the Alaska state championship and was named Alaska Coach of the Year. The roster included a girl.

The same two questions run through every clinic, every assessment, and every mentoring call: what do you want your players thinking, and what did you do this week to get them ready for it.

Mike Schwartz in his COACH letter jacket in a Minnesota high school corridor

TEACHING THE GAME · EVERY AGE · EVERY LEVEL

Forty years, verified

The record

1996–2006: Head Coach, Augsburg College — NCAA Division III. 1998 MIAC Champions; 1998 NCAA Division III Final Four, Plattsburgh, New York; National Coach of the Year; MIAC and ACHA Coach of the Year.
1992–96: Head Coach, White Bear Lake High School — State AA tournament appearances in 1994, 1995 and 1996. Section 3AA Coach of the Year three times.
1990–92: GM & Head Coach, Sioux City Musketeers — USHL. Professional head coach at Renon, Italy. San Jose Sharks scout, 1990–92.
1986: Head Coach, Lathrop High School, Fairbanks — Alaska state champions. Alaska Coach of the Year. The roster included a girl.

1981, 1982: Two-time NAIA national champion — As a player at Augsburg.
Current: USA Hockey Coach Developer, Levels 1–4, plus Master Level 5 — The top of USA Hockey's coach-education structure. National clinician since 1995. National Select Festival and Team Minnesota coach.
2019, 2023: Minnesota High School Coaches Hall of Fame — 2019. Jerry Petersen Award, 2023. Member of two elementary school Halls of Fame.
Ongoing: Coaching columnist, The Coaches Site — K–12 physical education degree. Elementary and secondary PE teacher and athletic director.