July 10, 1999
The Notre Dame hockey program has added assistant coach John Micheletto to its staff for the 1999-2000 season. Micheletto-who was the top assistant at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., during the past three seasons-will share primary assistant duties at Notre Dame with seventh-year Irish assistant coach Andy Slaggert.
Micheletto fills the staffing void left by the departure of 14-year Irish assistant coach Tom Carroll, who has moved on to a head coach/general manager position in junior hockey with the Des Moines (Iowa) Buccaneers of the United States Hockey League.
While at Union, Micheletto served as recruiting coordinator and was responsible for all aspects of on-ice instruction, plus game preparation and various administrative duties. He served during the 1996-97 season under head coach Stan Moore-the Eastern College Athletic Conference coach of the year-and also worked that season with first team All-America goaltender Trevor Koenig.
Micheletto spent the previous five years at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., where his various duties included serving as head coach of the hockey program, English instructor and dean of students at the prestigious prep school. His hockey teams at the Hill School won a combined 70 percent of their games, after posting just a 4-20-1 record in the season prior to his arrival (1990-91).
In addition to his collegiate and prep school experience, Micheletto has spent the entire decade of the 1990s as a youth coach with USA Hockey. He has served the past four years as coach-in-chief for all Atlantic district USA select camps and teams. Most recently, Micheletto coached the Atlantic/southeast district’s select-17 youth team to a bronze-medal finish at the annual 10-team Select Festival-representing the first medal finish for an Atlantic/southeast district team in the history of the national select festivals (at the 15, 16 or 17 age level).
A Chicago native, Micheletto attended Mount Carmel High School for two years before enrolling in the fall of 1982 at Milton (Mass.) Academy, where he was a defenseman and team captain on the varsity hockey team, in addition to serving as president of his class. He graduated from Milton Academy in 1984.
Micheletto-who completed his master level coaching certification in 1996-played collegiately at Dartmouth College and graduated from the Ivy League school in 1990 with a degree in English.
After his first two years at Dartmouth, Micheletto elected to pursue a professional hockey career in the Netherlands. He served as a player-coach in 1986-87 with the Enschede Lions of the Netherlands First Division League, earning all-league honors while ranking third in the league in scoring from his defenseman position. Micheletto helped the Lions improve from a last-place finish in ’85-’86 to a third-place showing in ’86-’87 while his first experience with coaching included running practices and implementing systems for professional and junior programs.
Micheletto returned from Holland in time to join the Erie (Pa.) Blades of the Atlantic Coast Hockey League and his late-season contributions earned Micheletto the Blades’ “most valuable newcomer” award.
His playing career ended in the winter of 1987, when Micheletto was invited to a free-agent tryout camp for the Saginaw (Mich.) Hawks of the International Hockey League. He then returned to Dartmouth and completed work on his undergraduate degree while also serving as a teaching assistant for various education and sociology courses.
Micheletto’s post-graduate endeavors included serving as co-owner and director of the Skaters Edge Hockey Schools, from 1990-94. The business venture included eight schools in five states, with Micheletto holding responsibility for all phases of organization and operation of the summer instructional camps.
Micheletto began playing hockey as a six-year-old in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn. His youth teams included the Spartans and Team Illinois, which he joined beginning with the 1981-82 season.
JOHN MICHELETTO: “Growing up outside of Chicago, Notre Dame was a big part of my life. My father worked in a steel mill near the Illinois/Indiana border and plenty of my family and friends are big fans of Notre Dame. There was a strong allure to work at a school that I was such a fan of as a kid. I think Notre Dame has become a real ‘player’ on the national college hockey scene. The program is in a very healthy condition and that’s a credit to the people who have worked with the program in the recent years. Whenever you hear about top recruits these days, you are hearing the Notre Dame name with them. The Notre Dame hockey program is poised for a lot of great things and I’m excited to be a part of it. I have a lot of experience with recruiting on the east coast but also throughout the rest of the country and Canada. I’m really looking forward to being a part of a recruiting process that can focus in on a select group of kids and sell a great program.”
NOTRE DAME HEAD COACH DAVE POULIN: “John has a very strong and varied background, with experience at the college, USA and prep school levels. He has experience recruiting all over the country and will be an excellent addition to our staff. Everyone associated with Notre Dame hockey plays an important part in our success and we certainly feel that John is the type of individual who will help the program continue to make strides up the national ladder.”