Hassan Brockman, a linebacker pressed into tailback duty, scrambled for his second touchdown to lead the Harbor Monsters to a 46-44 victory in the ArenaMania football championship game. Photos by John Gilbert.

When Mike Sertich’s body finally gave up the fight against pancreatic cancer last week at Solvay Hospice House in Duluth, all of us who had been close to the UMD hockey team he had built up to the NCAA’s elite status were left with an enormous hole in our lives. But among those who has suffered the most is Jim Knapp, who served as Sertich’s assistant for all 18 years Sertie was UMD head coach.

Knapp, who now runs a houseboat and fishing operation near his hometown of International Falls, stayed in telephone contact with Sertich nearly every day, right up until two days before he died, at age 77. He said on those conversations they shared many funny reminiscences of their time together, and only members of their teams knew how much time that was.

“A Division I coach gets a suite at every hotel a team stays at on the road,” Knapp said.“But Sertie said he’s just a regular guy and didn’t want a suite. He said that he and I would share a normal room, and so we did. We were roommates every night on every road trip, and when you do that, you learn a lot about the other guy’s quirks. For example, Sertie had this obsession with time. Every night when he got into bed, he would turn the little clock on the table between the beds so that it was facing him.

“I thought that was really odd, but because we both enjoyed playing pranks on each other, I would make sure that every time we left our room, for breakfast, lunch, to go to practice, or to go to the game, I would straighten the clock. When we came back, sure enough, he’d turn it toward himself. That went on for 18 years.”

The fact that Sertich, and Knapp, worked to unify every UMD team they had, and turn it into a family, is why every player on all of those teams got the message, and all of them have to be crushed by the news of Sertie’s death. Some of the inside stories offer evidence of Sertich’s efforts at unifying.

Sertich was hired by Gus Hendrickson to assist him at Grand Rapids, where they brought the Indians to prominence and maybe dominance in Section 7AA and the state. When they won the state title in 1975, UMD athletic director Ralph Romano took the chance to hire Hendrickson to coach the Bulldogs. Hendrickson brought Sertich with him, and they broke down the barriers of Canadian influence by injecting the top Iron Range prospects. 

The Bulldogs became Northern Minnesota’s team, although they never reached the desired peak.

When things bogged down, Sertich resigned in midseason, saying he feared the team struggles was affecting their friendship. Romano had urged Hendrickson to fire Sertich, but he refused, and then Sertich quit. 

When the season ended, the big prize was Cloquet star Corey Millen, who had narrowed his choice to UMD and Minnesota. Millen chose Minnesota, and Romano called Hendrickson in and said he would accept Hendrickson’s resignation. Gus refused, and Romano fired him, right on the spot.

Romano wanted to hire Chico Resch, the New York Islanders star and former UMD goaltender, but Resch decided to play one more season, so Romano needed a temporary fill-in. 

I was close enough to exchange confidences with Romano, Hendrickson and Sertich at the time, when I covered all college hockey for the Minneapolis Tribune, and even though I knew Romano was not a fan of Sertich, I coaxed Sertich to apply for the opening. He was reluctant, but I told him to apply and I would try to reach Gus so that he’d know why Sertich was applying to replace him. 

But Hendrickson had gone underground, and I couldn’t reach him. Sertich did apply, and Romano gave him a 1-year contract to be interim coach.

“Sertie called me and asked if I’d leave coaching Aurora-Hoyt Lakes to be his assistant,” said Knapp. “I said I would, but not if it was only a 1-year deal. So Sertie went to Ralph and got him to give me a 3-year contract. So when we started together, Sertie was on a 1-year deal, and I had a 3-year contract.”

Romano’s plan to discard Sertich hit a snag when UMD went 28-16-1 and finished fourth in the WCHA in 1982-83, and Sertich was voted coach of the year as UMD made its first trip to the NCAA tournament. That earned him another 1-year interim deal for the next year, which was the magical 1983-84 season: UMD went 29-12-2, won its first WCHA title and not only reached the NCAA tournament but lost a wrenching 4-overtime game to Bowling Green in the NCAA final. 

Sertich was voted coach of the year again, and got another 1-year deal. In 1984-85, UMD won its second WCHA title and went 36-9-3 before being short-circuited by RPI 6-5 in a 3-overtime semifinal. Sertich won coach of the year for an unprecedented third straight year — in his third year as coach.

Those two UMD championship teams captured the emotional support of the entire city of Duluth and Northeastern Minnesota. 

Downtown, virtually every business that had never seemed to care before, suddenly had UMD signs in their windows. Though the Bulldogs didn’t win the big trophy,  their tightness as a group was underlined when all but two players showed up for a 30th anniversary celebration of that 1983-84 near miss.

The Sertich-led Bulldogs had one more flash, winning the WCHA title again in the 1992-93 season, but some leaner years followed, and when the 1999-2000 team finished below .500, new athletic director Bob Corran coerced Sertich to announce that he had had enough and was resigning. 

My story said he “got resigned,” which Sertich appreciated.

“When Sertie got the word, I was up running on the track,” Knapp said. “He came up and told me the whole staff had been let go. He was pretty choked up about it, so I said, ‘Well then I better come clean.’ He asked what I meant by that, and I said, ’That was me who straightened the clock in our room, every day for 18 years.’ He started chasing me around the track, and we both had a good laugh about that.”

Scott Sandelin replaced Sertich and directed UMD to its first NCAA championship in 2010-11, and another the following year. The Bulldogs have now won three NCAAs under Sandelin, but he knows all too well that the groundwork for those championships came from the job Sertich did during his tenure.

“He’s had everything to do with any success UMD has had,” Sandelin wrote, in a prepared statement. “It’s a really, really sad day for the UMD hockey program. He meant so much to UMD hockey…it’s really tough to think that he’s not with us any more. We will miss him very much.”

Huskies shortstop Tyler Palmer singled home a run in the fourth inning to build the lead to 4-1 over the Rochester Honkers in the game that secured the second-half pennant for the Huskies.

On the local sports front, the Duluth Huskies made a spirited closing rally to win the second half of their division of the Northwoods League, which meant they got the chance to face the LaCrosse Loggers in a best-of-three playoff. But the Loggers whipped the Huskies, first in LaCrosse and Monday night in Duluth, in an 8-6 game that ended the Huskies season.

The Duluth HarborMonsters had better luck, because when quarterback Ja’Vonte Johnson went out with a leg injury, linebacker Hassan Brockman took over at QB and passed and scrambled for two touchdowns while leading the HarborMonsters to a 46-44 nail-biter victory against the Iowa Woo Saturday night at the DECC, to win ArenaMania, the name given to the Arena league’s playoff championship.

Ja'Vonte Johnson scrambled for a big gain before an injury knocked him out of the Arena League final at the DECC.