• Terry Watkins - 2023

Terry Watkins was born and raised in St. Paul, Minn., where he played youth hockey followed by high school hockey at Cretin High School. He played in the USHL for the Stevens Buick team in Minneapolis and then one semester of JV hockey for the Minnesota Gophers. He then enrolled at UW-Stout where he played hockey and was team captain for four years, graduating with a degree in Manufacturing Engineering.

Though a player of legendary proportion for the Blue Devils, Watkins is most notable for his role as a coach, and that goes back to his days in the Twin Cities, where he coached a Bantam team at the age of 19. Fast forward to 2020 and his retirement from coaching at UW-Stout, and you have a man who has spent more than six decades behind the bench. Even after the Blue Devil hockey program was discontinued in 1982, Watkins formed a club team at UW-Stout in 1988 and coached that until ice hockey once again became a varsity sport in 1996. Over the course of the next 24 years, Watkins would three times be named a Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Coach of the year. Watkins was named NCHA Coach of the Year following the 2006-2007 season and was also the national runner-up for Coach of the Year. His 2007-2008 Blue Devils team advanced to the NCAA Division III tournament. The 2008-2009 team finished with a 23-6-2 overall record and was second in the NCHA regular season, but won the NCHA tournament title, earning the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament and then advanced to the NCAA Division III semi-finals in Lake Placid. Watkins coached numerous All-American players, All-NCHA players and WIAC Scholar Athletes at UW-Stout.

Watkins was a founding member of Menomonie Youth Hockey in 1988 and continued years of service past that. He was inducted to the Menomonie Youth Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988 and was given the Menomonie Youth Hockey Coaching Director of the Year Award in 2023. Watkins was the first player named to the UW-Stout Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992. He was instrumental in fundraising for the renewal of the Facetti Community Center. Watkins also officiated youth, high school and college games for 10 years. Watkins also coached college Selects teams that completed in Russia in 1991 and in Sweden in 1998.

Watkins not only coached UW-Stout in hockey, but he also served as the UW-Stout’s men’s golf coach from 2006-2015, three times taking his teams to the NCAA Division III Championships. Watkins built the men’s golf team scratch, and it became a regional power in the late 1980s. Watkins is one of only two coaches in NCAA Division III history to take two different sports programs (hockey and golf) to the NCAA national tournament in the same academic school year.

Watkins and his wife Doreen are retired and live in Menomonie. Their sons Jeff and Todd, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, have all played hockey.