Tweed takes over as Cougars head coach

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This article was published 19/08/2025 (232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’d be difficult to find someone who’s more of a players’ coach than Charles Tweed.

The newly named head coach of the Assiniboine College Cougars women’s hockey team for the 2025-26 season, who served as the club’s assistant coach last year, isn’t just taking over the reigns behind the bench — he’s taking in the full circle moment.

“When you finally hear, ‘Would you like to be the head coach?’ I was just super excited,” Tweed said on Tuesday. “It’s obviously a really successful program, and it’s a program that’s near and dear to my heart.”

Tweed played for the Cougars during his college days more than 15 years ago and was part of the squad that took home the last Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference championship before the league dropped the sport in 2010. He said his experience playing for AC shaped him as a person just as much as a player. Now, he hopes to do the same for the next batch of players in the system.

“Some of the people I played with are still some of my best friends to this day … those relationships that you make and really that safe space to mature, make some mistakes, and grow into the leadership role, they become fundamental to who you are as a person moving forward,” Tweed said.

“If 10 years from now, our student athletes come back to me and say, ‘That was one of the most important years of my life, I learned so much about who I am, it made me a better teammate, and it made me a better person,’ I deem that really successful.”

That mindset — one grounded in long-term development, character-building, and team culture — is what Tweed brings to the table after two decades of coaching experience, working behind the bench in the Westman High School Hockey League with the boys’ Killarney/Wawanesa Raiders teams and also mentoring Westman Special Olympic athletes in curling and softball.

He hopes those experiences will help the Cougars continue to ride its success from last season and bring home its first title in four years.

Last year under head coach Dave Kirkup, AC posted 22 wins, two losses, and two ties before heading into the ACHA Division 2 nationals, when the Cougars’ run ultimately came to a halt in the championship game after losing to Sault College for a second consecutive season.

Although younger, Tweed expects his roster for this upcoming season to be a tough out.

“We’re going to be a bunch of gangbusters,” said Tweed with a chuckle.

With 19 players on the team, only six are returning players from last season: Kasey Fouillard, Madison Haliuk, Kylee Emms-Finnsson, Brooklyn Driedger, Alexis Campbell, and Rachel Halldorson. Tweed said the veterans are a hungry, hard-working group that will be leaned on to lead by example, on and off the ice.

“Our veteran leaders coming back aren’t just good hockey players, they’re the hardest-working people on the team,” he said. “When you know your leadership group is also the hardest workers on your team, it’s pretty easy to coach because everyone kind of has to fall in line.”

Miniota’s Fouillard, a centre who was named the team’s MVP last year, led her club in scoring with 16 goals and 30 points in just 25 games. Tweed said she’s just as strong on her side of centre ice as well.

“When your best player is backchecking, it makes it pretty easy as a coach to say, ‘We need to be strong on both sides of the puck,’” he said. “She’s the hardest-working player on the team, so she doesn’t take anything for granted. She’s such a great leader.”

Tweed believes being defensively sound and enforcing healthy structure is so crucial because it also allows the team to be more creative and less ‘play by the book’ style on offence, which is appealing to younger players especially.

“We want to we want to push the puck up the ice,” said Tweed. “It’s always more fun playing offence, so we’re going to do that.”

Binscarth’s Madison Haliuk is another veteran forward to keep an eye on throughout the year. Haliuk tallied at just under a point per game rate last season with 24 points in 25 games, but she really stood out during nationals, when she racked up three goals in three games.

Tweed said a major part of that success came from Haliuk visiting local outdoor rinks to just practice her shot. As the season went on, she developed an elite release, which gave her more ticks on the score sheet.

Goaltender Rachel Halldorson will also continue to be a significant piece in the team’s core. Halldorson registered a 1.06 goals against average, completed by a .963 save percentage last season, earning herself an ACHA Div. 2 first team all-star nomination.

Montana Jubenvill from Gilbert Plains and Russel’s Katie Falkevitch are newcomers that Tweed said he is excited to bring in. Jubenvill is a talented defender who can swiftly fly up and down the ice and join in on the attack, while Falkevitch is looking forward to playing in a women’s league following a tenure in men’s high school hockey with Russell’s Major Pratt School.

Tweed knows his Cougars squad is capable of having no shortage of success on the ice, but says it’s just a matter of executing its mentality off the ice.

“Ultimately, the team will decide what their identity is,” he said. “As a coach, you do the best that you can to provide structure and ensure there’s accountability, but at the end of the day, you really need your team and your leadership to decide what kind of group they’re going to be.

“We really want to focus on becoming more reliable teammates and people, and ultimately that’s our best measure of success. We’re going to have a pile of fun. We’re going to win some games, lose some games, and most importantly, learn a lot about ourselves in the process.”

» mdelucataronno@brandonsun.com