Maize and) Blue Line

JENNA TRUBIANO, CLASS OF 2017 BY DREW MOSER

The Detroit Red Wings.

It’s the simple yet profound answer to the question of what began Jenna Trubiano’s love of hockey.

When she was ten years old, Trubiano was watching a Red Wings game with her father when player Henrik Zetterberg pulled the puck backwards across the blue line and did a toe drag around a defender. She turned to her dad and proclaimed, “I want to do what Zetterberg just did.” “My dad said ‘okay, but you’ll have to learn how to skate first,’” she recalls. After she got her skating up to snuff, Trubiano started competing against players who had been skating since they started walking. She honed her craft and worked up to playing at the Tier 1 AAA level, the highest level for girls and women in the state of Michigan. She won two state championships at that level and then decided to play hockey for the University of Michigan. She graduated with a degree in Health and Fitness in 2017.

Now Trubiano is back at the university as head coach of the varsity women’s club hockey team.

She served as an assistant coach right after graduation, and in 2021 took over the head coaching duties. The program began in 1994 and competed in its first club game in 1995. “I’m excited to see the direction the program is headed. We’ve built an alumni base. We’ve built recognition, and we’re at the point where we’re continuing to grow, become more competitive, and play more competitive teams,” Trubiano said.

While she’s pleased with the program’s growth, she’s frustrated that women’s hockey is still only recognized as a club sport, which falls outside of U-M Athletics and into U-M Recreational Sports. The program competes in the Division 1 level of the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), regularly going up against varsity teams supported by their universities.

Financial struggles have been one of the club’s biggest obstacles. Not only do they have to pay to use the ice at Yost Arena for practice and games, but also travel, officiating, medical, and athletic training costs. This past season, Trubiano and her staff hired all the league-required trainers for their games. They also began renting university buses to help players get back and forth from matches. Trubiano remembers driving herself to games as far away as Delaware as a firstyear student in 2013 because transportation wasn’t provided.

Jenna Trubiano as hockey coach. Courtesy photo.

“Advocating for our players and making sure they’re safe and have access to these resources is my numberone goal,” she said. “When I’m talking to parents, I tell them, ‘If their child decides to come to Michigan and plays for our program, we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to make sure they’re safe.’”

The lack of resources hasn’t stopped the team. They made it to the semifinals of the Central Collegiate Women’s Hockey Association league tournament before losing 3-0 to Indiana Tech. “For this being my first season and not knowing what to expect, and having 15 new players on the roster, I was impressed by making it to the tournament semifinals,” Trubiano said. “For the upcoming season, we have all but three players returning. We have a strong group that understands the direction we’re heading and wants to put in the work on and off the ice and in the classroom. We will do whatever it takes to compete at the highest level.”

“I want women to realize this is a special and unique opportunity for them. [They can] go to the top public university, get a great education, and play hockey.” —Jenna Trubiano

Jenna Trubiano as hockey player. Courtesy photo.

Trubiano has been attending showcases, recruiting events, and tournaments to highlight the program, and her recruits are showing a lot of interest in playing hockey for U-M. “I want women to realize this is a special and unique opportunity for them,” she said. “They have an opportunity to go to the top public university, get a great education, and play hockey.”

Trubiano said her health and fitness classes helped her recognize the importance of strength conditioning for preventing ACL tears and concussions. As a result, she is looking to incorporate a more structured strength and conditioning program for the upcoming season. She added that her degree has also helped her build relationships with her players.

Enrolling in the School Kinesiology enabled Trubiano to connect with like-minded students and make the University of Michigan feel smaller. She said it can be intimidating at first when stepping onto U-M’s campus. “Kinesiology offers that small community feel within a big university. It’s a way to connect with people who share the same passions and interests as you,” she said. “I was able to get to know my professors on a personal level, and having classes with the same students helped tremendously; we supported each other in the classroom and hyped each other up before exams. It was a great community to be involved in.” Trubiano remembers breaking her leg during a hockey tournament in Massachusetts the day before an exam, and her Kinesiology professors worked with her so she could finish her courses that semester.

“I couldn’t make it, but my professors were extremely understanding of my situation, knowing it would be a process for me to get back into the classroom and into a mental state where I could perform on my exams,” she explained. “They were able to put the time in outside of their lecture hours to accommodate my needs.”

Coaching isn’t Trubiano’s only passion. When she isn’t on the ice, she works as a digital account executive for the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) in Ann Arbor. Trubiano discovered her interest in public health as an undergraduate and pursued an internship with the NSF marketing department. Immediately after graduation, she applied for a full-time position as an account manager in the NSF water business unit. Her current role has expanded to include managing certification services for filtration clients in multiple states throughout North America.

At the end of the day, it all comes back to her alma mater. “I originally applied to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and had gotten in, but I knew I wanted to be in Kinesiology,” Trubiano said. “Being in Kinesiology was the best thing that happened to me at Michigan.” n