Ohio State Hires Zoe Hickel as Assistant Coach

Another US National Team veteran and professional women’s hockey player is making the transition to coaching. Ohio State announced that Zoe Hickel will be the team’s new assistant coach.

Hickel played her college hockey at Minnesota Duluth from 2011 to 2015, where she was a two-year captain of the Bulldogs and was named a finalist for the 2015 Hockey Humanitarian Award.

Post-college, Hickel played five years of professional hockey in the NWHL, CWHL, and one year in Sweden. Internationally, she won gold medals with the US women’s national team at the 2015 and 2016 World Championships.

In the school’s press release, Ohio State head coach Nadine Muzzerall said:

“When hiring a coach you need to look at the complete package. Yes the XOs matter but they only consume a small fraction of the everyday coaching of these young women. We are developing them to be strong-minded women for life after hockey. There was no one better for this then Zoe Hickel. Her resume speaks for itself in terms of experience playing in the top league in women’s college hockey [WCHA], numerous years professionally after and representing her country’s colors on the U.S. National Team. She possesses the technical and tactical coaching but what you can’t read are the qualifications she owns that match our culture and what we are as Buckeyes.”