Chasing MacNaughton S3E1: Madame President

Season 3 Episode 1 of the Chasing MacNaughton Podcast from Tech Hockey Guide; “Madame President This week Tim Braun, Rob Gilreath, and Matt Cavender were joined by current Mitch’s Misfits president Olivia Wery. The topics of discussion included growing pains after the Covid season, Olivia’s Misfits origins, the challenges and advantages of being the 4th woman president in the Misfits history, and more.

Olivia and this Year’s Misfits (4:16)

Olivia’s Misfits experience began on K-Day of her freshman year. She signed up and was reallly excited to be part of the group. At the first meeting, she signed up for the North Dakota trip with a friend, but that friend bailed on her. Olivia decided to go anyway, and that proved to be one of the best decisions of her college career. She enjoyed her trip, began sitting with the section at home games, and immediately started making connections with her fellow students. Her experience is very organic, as most of ours are, and she seems like the natural successor the Misfits throne.

Olivia and her e-board are dealing with having to come back from the covid year, where no or limited students were allowed in the Mac, where the group does their most advertising. She and her crew are faced with a unique challenge in being able to recreate the group in their own way, which is both very exciting and very scary. We here at Tech Hockey Guide will be here to support them every step of the way.

This year’s iteration of the Misfits is already planning on having a healthy travel schedule, beginning the season in Madison on October 7th and 8th when the Huskies head south to play the Badgers. The Northern trip is already a given, but the group is already planning trips to Lake Superior State and St. Thomas. We take some time to talk about our past trips, as well as Olivia’s trip experience and plans for the year.

K-Day (15:10)

Olivia told us that she was there for the entire 4 hours, and during that time she shook a lot of hands, got her elevator pitch for the organization down, and had over 100 people sign up for the email list. That number is bound to dwindle a bit, but after so much time off, that’s a beyond admirable number.

During that time, she also hyped the game up quite a bit, telling kids that they need to get there as soon as possible because it’s been many years since Notre Dame has made a trip up to Tech. After so much time off, the atmosphere in Houghton will be second to none. It will certainly be nice to hear the crowd again after a year of empty rinks. We’re hoping it’ll be like Section L was never vacant.

While the Misfits might be a little rusty, they’re excited to hit the ground running and are hoping they can experience a rebirth of the organization now that kids can come together to support the team again. There may be a wrinkle in some traditions, but new ones will inevitably be born. We’ll have plenty of things to watch.

Wishlist

We know that alumni don’t always like to just be told to give money to the Misfits and that they like to have a personal connection to the group that’s on campus. They’d prefer to know which flags need to be purchased, how many bells to get, replace drum sticks, things of this nature. I told Olivia to come onto the podcast with a wishlist, of which most of the items can be found here. The group has been known to break things throughout the year, so be sure to check back later to see if more items have been added.

Olivia has also come up with a new way for alumni to get involved in helping the students, by allowing alums to “sponsor a room” for trips. Essentially, for a $100 donation, you would be paying to for 4 kids on a Misfits trip. In order to do this, simply sign into your PayPal account, send $100 to misfits@mtu.edu, and add the note “sponsor a room.” Doing this will help a lot of kids form some once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

We’re also hoping to get Misfits updates throughout the year, where members of the organization can talk about things that are going well, challenges they are facing, and equipment and funds they may need. One of the primary functions of Tech Hockey Guide is to ensure the continued success of Mitch’s Misfits, and you have an opportunity to be a direct part of that.

The Podcast that Wasn’t (57:15)

We had plans to do a podcast with CCHA commissioner Don Lucia. He was a fantastic guest, he gave fantastic, candid answer, but the chat didn’t record properly. So as far as you guys are concerned, it never happened. We were so down about that that we decided to take some time off.

With that said though, we’re happy that this was our only major snafu since the beginning of the podcast. It’s just a real shame that we didn’t get to push out the conversation.

He was able to talk to us about many things that are happening with the league as far as improvements with CCHA TV, changes in officiating, partnership with Instat, and more. It was extremely insightful and we’re hoping to have Commissioner Lucia back on the podcast around Christmastime.

The league appears to be in a far better place financially and organizationally as the CCHA than in the final years of the WCHA and we’re excited to see it in action this year.

Cut for Time

With our new sponsor of Fibke Dental in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, we were excited to discuss the Hodag and other cryptids. Other topics of discussion include Huntsville’s status as a program, Robert Morris’s dumpster fire of a situation, how every time Dustin gets sent out of the country for work, it usually ends with that country getting into some kind of unrest, and more. Subscribe on Patreon today to hear more!

Learn More

For additional information and more episode liner notes, check out our episode overview on Tech Hockey Guide. To make sure we can afford all our fancy equipment we purchased for the podcast and the THG website in general, please check out our patreon page and consider joining. Patrons at our Black Level or above receive an authentic MTU jersey patch and access to extra podcast content including extended versions of our other episodes. This week’s extended version is about 97 minutes including a 14 minute segment on Minnesota High School Hockey.
Follow us on twitter at ChasingMacPod and you can submit questions through our email address, ChasingMac@techhockeyguide.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review which will help us reach more people, and tell your friends. Please check out Jonathan Zamaites series previews every Friday and Mike Anleitner’s Old Dog in Texas column every Wednesday (you should definitely read this week’s column). Also, keep an eye out for new recruiting articles on Tuesdays. As always, special thanks to our patron saint Doc McResin for his generous donation to get this thing running, we hope you enjoy. Also, thanks to The Thank You Notes for all the bumpers in today’s episode. If you like what you hear, check them out at thethankyounotes.bandcamp.com