The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Sports
Tuesday, April 11, 2017 — 7

THANK YOU, MR. BERENSON

On Tuesday, Red Berenson 

announced his retirement as the 
head coach of the Michigan hockey 
team after 33 seasons. With his 
career coming to a close, former 
Michigan Daily hockey beat writers 
chose to reflect on their time 
covering the Wolverines under Mr. 
Berenson.

Avi Sholkoff, 2016-17: Prior to 

beginning my studies at Michigan, 
I knew little about hockey or Red 
Berenson. After only one year in 
Ann Arbor, I learned all about the 
famous head coach and his work at 
the helm of the Wolverines. In my 
second year, I had the opportunity 
to cover the Michigan hockey team 
for the Daily. About a month into 
the season, I went to Yost Arena 
after class one day to interview him 
by myself. Before he answered my 
questions, he asked me about where 
I was from and what I studied. 
Once learning I intended to minor 
in Spanish, he commended me for 
my decision to study a language 
and explained that he was once in 
Finland with some Finnish and 
Russian players who could speak 
multiple languages, while he could 
only speak English. It really warmed 
my heart because it showed that he 
cared what we Daily kids did.

Additionally, as someone who 

stutters, I’m often self-conscious 
of myself when I ask questions in 
press conferences. When I told Red 
about my stutter, he encouraged me 
to continue to asking questions and 
to not be afraid. 

I’ll always cherish my year 

covering the Michigan hockey team 
and the time I spent speaking with 
Red Berenson.

Mike Persak, 2016-17: The 

first time I met Red Berenson, I 
nervously shook his hand as he 
walked out of the room. The bones 
in his hand cracked loudly as I 
grabbed it, and he continued to walk, 
seemingly unfazed. Whether it was 
talking about hockey, or telling 
me off to the side of practice how 
he was worried about millennials 
using their phones too much, Red 
had a fascinating way of being 
commanding 
without 
seeming 

angry or scary. I’m grateful for his 
acceptance of the Daily and his 
willingness to give us all the access 
we had. Talking with other writers 
around the country, I’ve come to 
realize that we might have it better 
than any other college paper in that 
sense. Because of this, I believe my 
writing has come an extremely long 
way, and I have Red’s generosity to 
thank.

Laney Byler, 2016-17: I’ll never 

forget when Red Berenson told me 
he would look for my story in the 
paper the next day. It might not 
seem like much — it was a simple 
story about the history of Yost — but 
it was a story I was excited to write, 
and the fact that Red wanted to read 
it made it seem that much better.

Everyone always talks about 

how much Red Berenson meant 
to college hockey, and I have 
absolutely no doubt in my mind that 
the impact he made will last forever. 
But if there’s one thing I want to 
make clear, it’s that Red Berenson 
meant just as much to the college 
journalists he worked with.

His generosity was unparalleled 

as he let our beat (and many before 
us) fly on the team plane to attend 
games we otherwise couldn’t go 
to. He gave us honest answers 
and expected us to act like real 
journalists, whether we were a 
group of 19-year olds or not. But 
covering Michigan hockey with 
Red Berenson was never something 
I didn’t look forward to; it wasn’t 
easy, but it was unbelievably 
rewarding.

The Daily was lucky to have a 

coach like Red to cover, but not as 
lucky as the student journalists who 
experienced it firsthand.

Orion Sang, 2016-17: One doesn’t 

have to look far to understand 
the impact Red Berenson had on 

everyone he touched throughout 
his career.

Just open up Twitter and scroll 

through the few hours around 3 
o’clock Monday, and you’ll get a 
good idea. But it wasn’t just those 
on the rink who Berenson had an 
immeasurable impact on — the 
way he handled writers, especially 
us young cubs at the Daily, was 
truly remarkable. He didn’t have 
to sit down with us after every 
weekday practice, yet he did — 
sometimes running perilously close 
to his scheduled radio show at Pizza 
House in the process. He didn’t have 
to offer us two seats on the team 
plane for road trips, yet he did — and 
the plane didn’t even leave without 
us when we showed up at the wrong 
side of Willow Run Airport. And he 
didn’t have to be just so damn nice 
to us, as we worked on our craft and 
asked him questions he may not 
have felt like answering. Yet he did, 
and I will forever be grateful to him 
for that and all of the other gestures.

Jason Rubinstein, 2014-16: In 

my opinion, there was no coach 
friendlier to the media than Red. 
He always went out of his way to 
accommodate the Daily, including 
taking us on the team plane to cover 
away events. You truly had to no 
excuse to be uneducated about the 
team and if you were, Red would 
call you out or simply give you his 
famous blank stare. I always felt 
like Red cared about my life outside 
of hockey writing as well, and he 
helped me decide what I wanted to 
do with my future. I’ll be forever 
grateful to Red.

Minh Doan, 2015-16: Red didn’t 

just understand hockey himself, but 
he wanted everyone to understand 
with him. Whether it was giving me 
a blank stare when I didn’t notice 
he had switched lines in practice 
(which 
happened 
regrettably 

often) or explaining to me how the 
umbrella power play system worked 
after practice one afternoon, Red 
wanted me to be knowledgeable 
about hockey and went out of his 
way for me to be so.

But in my mind, that not what 

I’m the most thankful for about 
Red. That award would go to Red’s 
level of care for those around him. 
And the access he gave to the Daily 
exemplified that. By taking us on 
the team plane to opening up every 
practice to us, Red made it really 
hard for us to do a bad job.

He gave us everything we needed 

to do a good job, and after covering 

college 
hockey 

for a 
year, I really 

believe 

that no college hockey outlet had it 
better.

That’s what I valued the most 

about Red. He truly cared about 
my 
success, 
whether 
it 
was 

within 
journalism 
or 
outside, 

and it’s for that care that I’m 
incredibly thankful to have had the 
opportunity to cover him for a year.

Kevin Santo, 2015-16: There are 

just two stories that I need to tell.

Last 
November, 
roughly 
a 

month after I started covering the 
Michigan hockey team, Red walked 
out of his office while I was waiting 
to interview one of his players. He 
stopped in the doorway, turned to 
me and said, “Just so you know, the 
first thing my wife asks me when I 
get home is, ‘Did you bring home a 
Daily?’ ”

The second happened a couple 

months later, when I sat down with 
Red to watch one of the team’s 
practices. We didn’t mention a word 
of hockey. Instead, I asked him 
where he thought his life would 
have gone without the sport, and 
he told me of all the things that 
piqued his interest in college. What 
surprised me was that he then asked 
me about my future plans. I told 
him I wanted to go into journalism. 
He paused.

Then he looked me in the eyes 

and told me, “You know, you’re 
gonna need to outwork a lot of 
people for that.”

It was something I already knew, 

but hearing it come from Red was a 
kick in the ass I needed at the time.

So I just want to say thank you 

Red, for always caring about the 
college kids who covered your team, 
and thank you Mrs. Berenson, 
for caring about what those same 
college kids were writing.

Zach 
Shaw, 
2014-15: 
Like 

everyone, I learned a lot from Red 
Berenson, probably more than I 
realize yet. But my main lesson has 
to do with Red’s comical desire to 
fly the student hockey reporters 
to all the road games. I mean, who 
does that? Red does, whether his 
administrators wanted him to or 
not. But what impressed me most 
was why he did it. Red is not this 
charismatic storyteller that loves 
to have bumbling student reporters 
ask him questions or write stories 
about him, and 
the Daily 
has 
a 

long 
history 
of not 

holding back when hockey players 
get into trouble on campus. The 
flight was not a gift to show his 
appreciation, it was a lesson. When 
you get to be as close to a team as 
Red let the Daily get, you learn just 
how human the team is. You learn 
what that flight home is like after a 
curb-stomping loss, and you learn 
how emotional an injury can be for 
the entire team.

Living, studying and spending all 

of your time with your teammates 
is a phenomenon unique to college 
athletics, and it’s so difficult to truly 
understand it from the outside. But 
when I thanked Red for letting me 
cover the team at the end of the 
season, and he said “I hope we gave 
you a better understanding of what 
we go through,” I realized he put 
us on the inside not just for P.R. or 
goodwill, but to give us that inside 
experience so few ever get. Every 
time I write a story, I draw on that 
experience that Red went out of his 
way to give me.

Erin Lennon, 2013-15: I knew 

nothing about ice hockey when 
I started writing about it. Red 
Berenson knew that as well as I did, 
though he never asked and never 
once called attention to questions 
that exposed my untrained eye. 
Instead, Red’s answers were coated 
in thoughtfulness and filled with a 
type of confounding wisdom that 
resonated far beyond the ice rink. 
I’ll remember his gentle delivery, 
the anecdotes and the drawn out 
metaphors, the crooked smirk he’d 
make when he delivered a line he 
knew would become the pull quote 
in my article — “With cement trucks 
out there, you have to decide how 
fast you’re willing to go. There’s a 
risk involved in using that speed. Do 
you want to go or is it safer to stay 
here?”

And I’ll never forget the hushed 

plane ride back from a losing effort 
against the Gophers in Minnesota. 
I was making my way back to my 
empty row from the restroom 
when Red looked up from his game 
notes and gestured toward me in 
the aisle. He wanted to make sure 
I’d also received one of the warm 
cookies and milk that his players 
were wolfing down behind us, 
compliments of the charter plane. 
Yes, I had. Thank you, Coach.

Greg Garno, 2012-14: The thing 

I appreciate about Red is that he 
never tried to BS me. With Red, you 
could count on his honest thoughts. 
He wasn’t afraid to say how poorly 
his team played if they had a bad 

game (and they did). He never 

tried to praise someone too 

much if they had a game (there was 
still more they could do). And he 
made sure to tell me I should have 
gotten a business degree instead of 
something else (he was right). When 
so many coaches aren’t willing 
to speak with media members 
or decide to spin something in 
order to avoid backlash, Red was a 
refreshing anomaly. There he was 
in the blue chair at the head of the 
room, Monday through Thursday 
ready for questions. Perhaps I 
was spoiled by that honesty as I 
continued reporting, but I know 
that I was better because of it.

Alejandro 
Zúñiga, 
2012-

14: His eyes tell stories. That’s 
what I remember. You would be 
talking hockey with one of the 
sport’s legends, and occasionally 
a question would make his eyes 
sparkle. And you knew that, for 
a moment, the man who so often 
spoke about winning the next 
game was reminiscing about some 
other game, weeks or years or even 
decades before. Sometimes, if you 
were lucky, you’d hear a piece of 
history that would haunt you the 
next day, because you knew your 
writing could never do it justice. 

Red Berenson often thanked the 

Daily for covering hockey, for caring 
about his teams. That always struck 
me as silly, because of course we 
cared. We cared about the stories 
he told, the players he coached, the 
program he revived. And Red, it 
was an absolute honor. 

Liz Vukelich, 2011-13: One 

September afternoon, I found 
myself sitting in Red Berenson’s 
office 
conducting 
a 
preseason 

interview. Somehow the Daily’s 
sports editors thought it would be 
OK to put me on the hockey beat, 
despite the fact that I had never 
sat through a hockey game before 
and in all honesty, had very little 
understanding of how the game 
worked. 

I’m happy to share I’m not that 

shaky, hockey illiterate person 
anymore and that is solely thanks 
to Red Berenson. Though Red 
never coached me on the ice, he 
coached me and every other Daily 
writer who ever had the pleasure 
of sharing a post-practice interview 
with him just as much as any athlete 
who has ever played under him. 
He had a patience that I’ve never 
encountered in any other coach 
and he cared about turning every 
single student journalist he crossed 
paths with into a bona fide hockey 
pro. No question was too simple 
— he’d pause interviews to make 
sure us Daily writers had a firm 

grasp of the concepts he was talking 
about. Red cared about us in such 
an unsuspecting way and is one of 
the most generous people you’ll ever 
encounter when it comes to his time. 
Even when I reached my goal senior 
year of covering Michigan football, 
part of me still thought how lovely 
it would be to just go back to sitting 
in the hockey media room again and 
listen to Red chat about hockey and 
life.

A few weeks before I graduated, 

myself and a fellow beat mate made 
an appointment to meet with Red, 
to see if we could express to him 
how much of an impact he had had 
on our time at Michigan. The three 
of us talked — he asked about our 
post-graduate plans and we shared 
some happy memories that we had 
made covering his team. After a few 
minutes of conversation, it was time 
to leave and we asked if we could 
take a quick picture. And Red, who 
had shared some incredible stories 
over the previous years, uttered the 
seven greatest words I’ve ever heard 
come out of his mouth:

“Is this going to be a selfie?”
Matt Slovin, 2011-13: Some of 

my best memories of college came 
from covering Red’s teams. Rare 
is the coach that commands the 
level of respect he did. I remember 
flying 
back 
from 
the 
Upper 

Peninsula on the team charter after 
a particularly stinging loss, and not 
a word was spoken the entire way 
back to Ann Arbor. Those losses 
were uncharacteristically frequent 
for Red’s teams during the two 
years I covered him, but even so I 
realized that I was in the presence 
of a coaching legend. Like so many 
Daily writers before me, I attribute 
my love of hockey to Red.

Zach Helfand, 2011-12: Everyone 

in 6th Bush in South Quad my 
freshman year, or at least everyone 
with hockey student tickets, knew 
that the second shot before leaving 
for Yost was sacred. That one was 
always reserved for a toast: “To 
Red Berenson.” A year later, when 
researching a story, I’d find out that 
just about all that we loved about 
Michigan hockey games could be 
credited to Berenson; without him, 
there’s a decent chance there’s no 
more hockey program to speak of.

Which also would’ve meant a 

lot fewer sportswriters. Berenson 
showed clear fatherly disapproval of 
us Daily kids heading full steam into 
a dying profession, was a big reason 
we were heading full steam in the 
first place. We all heard stories 
about Red. He was terrifying. And 
we thought if we could win over 
Berenson we could take on just 
about anyone. The truth really was, 
Red was kind of a softy. He wouldn’t 
say it, but if you showed up every 
day, worked hard and wrote fairly, 
you were one of his guys. And he’d 
take care of you.

Because we cared a lot about 

our hockey coverage, we needed 
a way to get a writer up to Green 
Bay, on short notice, for the skate-
around the day before the NCAA 
tournament started. Red, we found 
out, cared a lot about our hockey 
coverage, too — or least cared about 
us. And so a spot opened up on 
the team charter. We were riding 
with Red. We wrote an article that 
day about a possible line change, 
a nugget he probably would’ve 
preferred stay unpublished. But fair 
was fair, and he took care of us. So 
from a grateful sportswriter (sorry, 
Red), a toast to a very deserved 
retirement: To Red Berenson.

Everett Cook, 2011-12: On the 

43rd anniversary of his six-goal 
game, Red sat in his usual chair and 
fielded the usual questions. We sat in 
our regular spots, Zach and I to his 
right and Liz and Slovin to his left, 
and talked lines and pairings. We 
did not discuss one of the greatest 
scoring outbursts in the history of 
the NHL, the night Red 

See RED, Page 8

KATELYN MULCAHY/Daily

Michigan coach Red Berenson announced his retirement Saturday afternoon at the Junge Family Champions Center after leading the Wolverines for 33 years.

