WORCESTER, Mass. — When you go to EliteProspects.com and check the career stats line for Western Michigan head coach Pat Ferschweiler , there’s a very good senior season at Rochester John Marshall High School in 1987-88, and an even better season with the USHL’s Rochester Mustangs in 1989-90. And there’s a mysterious void in between.
While some kids today take a “gap year” between high school and college, Ferschweiler headed north from Rochester to the place he thought he would spend the next four years. But as John Lennon once crooned, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
Ferschweiler was invited to walk on at Minnesota Duluth and enrolled in school there. He went to training camp with the Bulldogs, was on the roster and was fully expecting to play for a program that — after a pair of WCHA titles and two Frozen Four trips in the middle 1980s — had sunk to the lower half of their conference.
It was the first time in my life that I’ve been told I’m not good enough.
Around Thanksgiving of 1988, Ferschweiler got a big awakening to the realities of being a college athlete on the fringe of Division I. At the end of the first academic quarter, the Bulldogs coaches let Ferschweiler know they did not have a spot for him on the roster.
“It was the first time in my life that I’ve been told I’m not good enough,” Ferschweiler said this week while preparing the Broncos for their NCAA tournament opener versus Northeastern, which they won 2-1 in overtime on Friday.
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He recalled that even then, at 19, he realized: “They’re right, and I’ve got to either dig in and get better or I’m not going to play Division I.”
So he went home to Rochester, got a spot on the local USHL roster and excelled, playing in the league’s all-star game the next year. He was a sought-after commodity and said his visit to the Western Michigan campus in Kalamazoo, Mich., just “felt right.”
In those days, NCAA eligibility rules were more stringent, and the nine weeks at UMD, followed by a transfer, had effectively cost Ferschweilier his freshman year of college hockey. As a sophomore for the Broncos, he put up 20 points in 40 games. As a junior he was second on the team in scoring (behind future NHLer and TV talking head Keith Jones) and as a senior, Ferschweiler was named the Broncos captain.
After more than 400 games in various levels of pro hockey, Ferschweiler moved behind the bench, working as an assistant for the Broncos and with the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings. Returning to his alma mater for a second coaching stint, Ferschweiler took over the program in the summer of 2021 when Andy Murray stepped away.
In his first season, he has already made history, leading Western to its first NCAA tournament win, and can make more history on Sunday, as a victory over Minnesota would give the Broncos their first berth in the Frozen Four. And it all started with a coach telling Ferschweiler he wasn’t good enough.
“Being cut at UMD was the best thing that ever happened to me, because it made me decide, do I like hockey or do I love hockey,” he said. “That was a motivating factor for me.”
It started his road to Kalamazoo, and Ferschweiler joked that once he showed up on campus, he never really left.
“Like the gum on their shoe, they can’t get rid of me,” he said, with a grin.
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