By Justin Emerson

The Arizona Amateur Hockey Association may have a new president, but that doesn’t mean he’s new by any stretch to the growing southwestern hockey community.

At the annual AAHA meeting in September, the board of directors of the governing body of youth and amateur hockey in Arizona selected Brendan Shaw into its most visible role.

Shaw, a longtime coach and hockey mentor in Arizona, served as a board member representing the Coyotes Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) for a year before accepting a nomination at last month’s meeting and winning the vote.

Shaw replaces the long-serving Jon Brooks as president.

“My job is continue the efforts Jon Brooks has put forward,” Shaw said. “He put a lot of time in for the state of Arizona and hockey. He put a huge effort in, so I want to make sure he gets a lot of credit for that.”

Now that he has the job, Shaw was quick to state what his overarching goal in his term as president will be.

“Continued evolution of hockey in Arizona,” he said. “There’s a lot of things.”

By that, he said the most important thing is growth. Not enough kids are growing up wanting to be hockey players, and that’s something he wants to change. Improving the product, including the quality of the ice facilities in the state as well as potentially adding new ones in the future are on the agenda.

Originally from Rhode Island, Shaw attended the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he earned a degree in sports business management in 1999. He came to Arizona in 2001 when he worked as an executive with Polar Ice International. He helped start the former P.F. Chang’s Tier I Elite Program (since absorbed by CAHA’s Jr. Coyotes lineup), and more recently as a key contributor and coach to the Jr. Coyotes AAA program.

As for why he turned to AAHA in recent years: “I felt like I wanted to contribute on a larger scale.”

Shaw is still a coach with the Jr. Coyotes out of the Ice Den in Scottsdale, and said he doesn’t expect the presidency to interfere with any of his other duties. Between coaching, working on the AAHA board, co-owning an investment advisory firm and being a husband and father to two, his life has been busy for awhile now; he’s used to it.

He’s been the AAHA board’s president for about a month now, and one thing has changed: he is starting to see everything that goes into a high-profile job of that nature. He said there’s a lot of things that people don’t consider when thinking about the job, including working with everyone from referees to scorekeepers to legal teams.

“There’s so many things you don’t know until you dig your teeth in,” he said.

Along with his new presidency, Sarah Dennee of the AZ Lady Coyotes will take over the position of secretary. Jim Rogers of the Valley of the Sun Hockey Association (VOSHA) will stay in his vice president and treasurer’s role. Additionally, the rest of the AAHA board includes: Tammy Bartlett, (administrator), Ed Carr (Arizona Hockey Union), Bryan Eisentraut (supervisor of officials), Sharon Enck (social media manager), Evan Gavrilles (Mission Arizona), Larry Gibson (coaching education program coordinator), James Goon (VOSHA), Herb Haley (SafeSport coordinator), Alex Hicks (Desert Youth Hockey Association), Donnalee Jerome (AAHA associate registrar), Mark Manone (Flagstaff Youth Hockey Association), David Marsh (Arizona High School Hockey Association), Brian McBride (DYHA), Adam Mims (at-large), Geoff Pashkowski (at-large), Joe Petruzzella (CAHA), Tim Reckell (AHSHA), Tony Radke (CAHA), Matt Shott (at-large), Becky Taylor (at-large), Bruce Urban (at-large) and Chris Zorza (Arizona Hockey Officials Association).