Decker elevated teammates, opponents on way to Hall of Fame, Stafford says

Gordie Stafford has been the director of girls hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary's School Hockey Center of Excellence in Faribault, Minnesota, since 2004, and coached Brianna Decker during her four years at the school from 2005 to 2009. In his time at Shattuck-St. Mary's, Stafford has won 13 national championships between the Prep and under-16 teams. Decker helped the school win three national under-19 championships (2005, 2006, 2009) and returned in 2022 to work as an associate coach with Stafford for three seasons.

I first met Brianna Decker when she was 14 years old. I was in my first year as director of girls hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary's, and she had been highly recommended to our program. She was a force from the start, and that became evident in her very first days at the school.

The Lamoureux twins, Monique and Jocelyne, had arrived the year before. They were a force of nature themselves, with their relentless commitment, drive, intensity, skill and competitiveness. Brianna decided right away that she wanted to be like them, and she essentially became a "third twin."

It soon became obvious that she was built the same way and as she matured, her own dominance emerged.

If character can be defined as what you do when no one is watching, Brianna embodies that ethic.

While opportunities for girls' and women's hockey players seem to be growing exponentially with the emergence of the PWHL, things were different when Brianna and her peers were in their athletic prime. Back then, competitive outlets were limited to the World Championships and the Olympics every four years.

Brianna spent countless hours training on her own, motivating herself with an insatiable competitiveness and drive to be her best. Whether at home in Wisconsin, back in Madison with the Badgers, at Shattuck-St. Mary's with our teams or in Boston with her network of teammates, she embraced the grind.

Sidney Crosby is the male equivalent of Brianna. I've been at Shattuck-St. Mary's long enough to have seen both come through our program. If you never got the chance to watch Brianna play, Sidney offers the closest comparison: The compact, explosive, powerful skating style. The dogged, relentless pursuit of the puck. The silky hands for passing and handling around the net and the heavy, quick-release, accurate shot. She was a leader not through words, but through authentic, consistent, pure competitive action.

Brianna is among the most competitive people I've ever met. Her consistency from game-to-game as a leader and force on her teams, to her ability to make clutch plays and score big goals, was remarkable. Growing up with three brothers, competition was simply part of her life. She loves to compete, and she does so with the toughness she learned in rough-and-tumble backyard games, where her brothers expected her to keep up and her parents warned that if she came inside crying, she couldn't play with the boys.

I've rarely seen another athlete whom competitors respect to the point of reverence, because they know she'll push them to get better. Brianna elevates everyone around her, both teammates and opponents alike.

Everyone knows the intensity of the rivalry between the Canadian and American women's national teams. During one stretch, Brianna purposely moved to Calgary to play in the CWHL with some of her fiercest Canadian rivals. She wanted to be challenged by the best and they welcomed her not just as a teammate but because they knew she'd make them better, too. And in true Brianna fashion, when those Calgary teammates became rivals again on Team Canada, she gave no quarter and expected none in return.

To me, that's the essence of true competitive spirit. Elite athletes share another key strength of character. While they don't need others to push them, their sport is as much who they are as what they do. They attract players who believe training alongside them will elevate their own game. Brianna had that magnetic pull. Her teammates had to raise their level to keep up and her opponents knew they had to do the same.

Now, having gotten to know her as an adult -- we coach together at Shattuck-St. Mary's -- I've seen even more layers. She's hilarious with a quick wit, a sharp eye for human quirks, and an endless appetite for practical jokes. Spend any time around her and expect to laugh.

At the same time, she's a devoted student of the game and a natural teacher. Many elite players struggle to communicate as coaches because their player mindset was so wired for individual excellence, a kind of necessary selfishness, laser-focused on getting better.

There's a cliché in hockey that you don't coach the game, you coach kids. Brianna lives that truth. She stays connected in her coaching to the girl who arrived at Shattuck all those years ago, driven by nothing more than a passion to lift the next generation.

At the end of the day, that's the true mark of a champion: Wanting to influence everything you touch and everyone you've been around, better.