Switzer, Ryan

BORN AUGUST 16TH, 1960, in Taylor BC, Canada, he has been on the ice since he was a toddler, rising through the junior hockey ranks in North America and Europe before arriving on Australian shores in the late-1980s. He had played Junior-A hockey in the WHL for the second edition of the Edmonton Oil Kings (1978-79), the Great Falls Americans (1979-80), and the Saskatoon Blades (1979-80). He played the 1980-81 season with EC Peiting in the Oberliga, the third level of ice hockey in Germany, and then the University of Alberta in the CWUAA in 1981-82.

By 1988 he was installed in Sydney's Macquarie Bears where he won top point scorer of the NSW Super League. He won 2 Goodall Cups that year and the next, and succeeded Dan Reynolds as head coach of the Australian national team in 1990. He coached the Mighty Roos to a D-Pool silver medal in Cardiff in Wales that same year against Great Britain and Spain; bronze in Hull in England in 1992; Slovenia in 1993; and Spain in 1994, to complete 4 consecutive international campaigns. He led the national team to 23rd in the World in 1992, the most successful coach of the time.

He has said his time as coach of the national team was "a great era given the caliber of competition at the time and awesome group of intelligent players". Remembered by many as their best coach, he considered the defeat of Hungary 8-1, after they were just relegated to Australia's division in the 1992 Worlds, "the best collective execution of a game plan by a group of players that I have been a part of". [1] Hungary had been "mocking our players in pre-game skate while we were still tweaking our system". [1] In the 1995-96 season, he returned to Canada where he was assistant coach of the Medicine Hat Tigers in the WHL. In 2016, he was still playing with the Sydney Bombers, the founder and CEO of TopMe, a mobile recharge app, and a sports consultant.