Sertie Stories

‪I was young guy growing up in rural Duluth during the mid-80s run of UMD hockey. They were my world. Years later through pure coincidence my wife and I became friends with one of Mike’s sons and his wife. By this time I had passed on my love of UMD hockey to my youngest daughte‬r. One evening Mike was in town to visit his family and we ran into the Sertich clan at a local establishment.  We stopped at their table to say hi and were introduced to Mike. Mike proceeded to strike up a 10 minute conversation with my daughter about her life, plans for the future and just an overall interest in her as a person. She of course shared her love of UMD hockey with him. We said our goodbyes and went to our table. As they were leaving, Mike came to our table. He took the UMD pin off of his jacket and gave it to my daughter as a gift.  Such a small gesture, but one that meant the world to our family. She still has that pin on the jacket she was wearing that evening.

Rest in peace Mike.

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Chris via email:

I mean how much did this guy love UMD and UMD hockey. In 2004 when the dogs advanced to their first frozen 4 in 20 years, a group of students referring to themselves as the penalty box, decided we needed to raise money to make our trip. On our long drive home from Grand Rapids Michigan, we came up with a brilliant idea to do a car wash in early April to raise maybe a couple of hundred bucks or so. Little did we know the current staff found out and got the word out everywhere. The incredible thing had to be when we showed up to the place who allowed us to wash cars, we had about 50 cars already ready to have their car washed. The most incredible part was the first car in line, who’d been there 2 hours early, was Mike. Right away he said he didn’t really care about getting it washed, just wanted to help some big fans out, as he knew us well, and just wanted to shoot the (um, breeze!) for an hour about hockey.

By far one of the best memories you could have about a guy. Made sure to tell us to have a few for him out there since he hasn’t had one in 20 years. That was just Mike. Going to miss that guy a lot.

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Chris K. via email: 

I love listening to the show to stay connected to Duluth and UMD sports. I only met Mike once, but it has stuck in my mind for over 30 years. It is probably not a great story for sharing publicly, but I always chuckle about it now.

I was a soph at UMD back in the winter of 1988, and was friends with Jess Myers. He called one night (I think it was a weekday, which doesn’t make a lot of sense) and asked if I wanted to go down and watch the Bulldogs from the pressbox as they were playing an exhibition against a Russian team and the crowd would be small.
In between periods, Jess asked if I wanted to go down to the locker room. We were walking in the hallway on ice level and Sertich was standing there. Jess walked over and they starting talking and joking around, I am not sure if I was even introduced. They must have just played a series in Mariucci, because I do remember Jess joking around about how the crowd treated him down there.

I was wearing a sweatshirt from my freshman year…. our dorm was Griggs M, and we had gray sweatshirts with a University of Minnesota M on the left chest and section underneath it. ALl of a sudden Coach Sertich glanced at my shirt and grabbed a handful of the shirt by my chest and lifted it and me up to my tiptoes and said (I’ll paraphrase) What the heck is this crap :-). I was stunned and probably didn’t say anything other than a stammer and shocked look…. it felt like forever but was probably a second or two that he glared at me, then he let go, gave a little smirk and twinkle of his eye, and turned and went back to talking to Jess. I was probably shaking for the next hour.

That was it, my one brush with Sertie, but it probably summed up his tough guy sense of humor and the strong Gopher hatred that existed back then.

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For me, there are two that stand out. I told the first one on the radio a couple times, but when Chris Long and I were co-hosting a Saturday morning show on the old All Sports 710 WDSM, we made the brilliant(ly lame) decision to try pulling a prank one year the show fell on April 1 (this was 1999, the offseason before Sert’s last year at UMD).

We concocted this half-brained idea that the Packers were trading up to the top spot in the draft with Cleveland for the right to take Kentucky quarterback Tim Couch (who, by the way, did not pan out). Remember, this was before the internet was the internet, and before NFL insiders were a thing all over the place on said internet.

Sertich was listening in his garage and called in, completely flummoxed why the Packers would do such a thing (as it turned out, Brett Favre played almost another full decade in Green Bay). We had little choice but to let everyone off the hook, which maybe as I think about it was Mike’s intent when he called in. It’s one of the very few radio bits I’ve done over the years that I wish I had on tape, but that day’s recording was lost in the many transitions we’ve undergone over the years.

The other story is one that I’ve not shared in the time since Mike’s passing. We lost Tom Kurvers to lung cancer in June of 2021. The day after we learned of his passing, I messaged Mike to ask if he wanted to come on my show and talk about Tom, knowing how close they had been and what Tom meant to Mike. I felt that was great perspective to offer, if Mike was up to such a thing.

He came on with me the next day, and it was a great conversation. Stories were shared, and you could hear the emotion in Mike’s voice when he talked about Tom being gone. I’m not one who’s ever really comfortable asking people to talk about someone they’ve lost, and it was especially tough here to ask Mike to join me on the radio. But he was so gracious with his time, and so willing to share the emotions, both good and bad.

Mike Sertich was always real, no matter the circumstances. There was no facade, no cover, no fakeness to him. And he will be missed by many.

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If you haven’t heard, Mike Sertich will be remembered on Sept. 13 at the DECC. Visitation at noon, followed by a 2pm service. The family has asked that memorials be directed to the Mike Sertich Men’s Hockey Scholarship at the University of Minnesota Foundation. You can give here if you would like to.