Melanie Ruzzi Hired As Head Coach At Brown

Brown University has named former Princeton assistant coach Melanie Ruzzi as their new women’s head hockey coach.

Ruzzi, a native of Burnsville, Minnesota, played four seasons of college hockey at Providence College from 1999-2003 before embarking on a coaching career. After two years as an assistant at D-3 Amherst College, Ruzzi served as an assistant for four years at Harvard, since years at Providence, a year at Yale, and two years at Princeton(though the second of those seasons was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic). She has also worked as an assistant with the US women’s U-18 team.

She’ll face a tough project in building Brown’s program. The Bears last had a winning record in the 2005-2006 when Digit Murphy coached the team to a 15-13-5 record. The school’s only NCAA tournament appearance came in 2002, when Brown finished runner-up to Minnesota Duluth in the second-ever NCAA women’s D-1 hockey tournament.