George Roll is an American
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
coach. He was the
head coach
A head coach, senior coach or manager is a professional at training and developing athletes. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than other coaches. In some sports, the head coach is instead called the "manager", as in assoc ...
of the
Clarkson Golden Knights
The Clarkson Golden Knights are composed of 20 teams representing Clarkson University in intercollegiate athletics, including men and women's alpine skiing, basketball, cross country, ice hockey, lacrosse, nordic skiing, soccer, and swimming. Men' ...
from
2003 thru the end of the
2010-2011 season, leading them to their most recent conference championship and
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
tournament
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
# One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
appearance. Roll began his coaching career shortly after finishing his college career at
Bowling Green
A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls.
Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep ...
where he was part of the
1984 National Championship team, becoming a graduate assistant for his alma mater before joining first-year coach
Mark Morris's staff at Clarkson. Roll remained as an assistant for eight years, helping Morris establish Clarkson as a power in
ECAC Hockey
ECAC Hockey is one of the six conferences that compete in NCAA Division I college ice hockey, ice hockey. The conference used to be affiliated with the Eastern College Athletic Conference, a consortium of over 300 colleges in the eastern United ...
, winning two regular season titles, two tournament titles, and making the NCAA tournament six times, including a
Frozen Four
The annual NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament is a college ice hockey tournament held in the United States by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to determine the top men's
team in Division I. Like other Division I cham ...
appearance for the first time in over 20 years.
Roll left Clarkson to become the head coach of
Oswego State, a
Division III
In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below.
Association football
*Belgian Thir ...
program, and in each of his seven years there the Great Lakers finished with a winning record. Unfortunately, other than a tournament appearance in his second season, Oswego State didn't have much else to show for his tenure until 2002-2003 when Roll pushed the Great Lakers to a 25-7-1 record, earning a regular season title, a conference championship, and were runners-up to the D-III National Title. Roll, however, decided against building on his earlier success after he was offered the top job at Clarkson, replacing his mentor Mark Morris after he was fired due to an incident in early November.
The first few years with the Golden Knights were rocky as Clarkson couldn't manage a winning record until the third year, but Clarkson won 25 games in
2006–07, including a conference championship and when they earned a regular season crown the following season it appeared that they had turned the corner. After that brief success, however, Clarkson declined rapidly, ending with losing records in each of the next three seasons and causing Roll termination at the end of the
2010–11 season. Roll quickly found a new job as he was announced as the first head coach for
Nazareth College's new Division-III ice hockey program that was to begin in 2012-13.
As of 2021 he is still in that position.
Head coaching record
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roll, George
1962 births
American ice hockey coaches
Clarkson Golden Knights men's ice hockey coaches
Living people
Ice hockey coaches from Illinois
NCAA men's ice hockey national champions