Mauron thriving in assistant role

OXFORD, Ohio — When Lionel Mauron was hired for Miami’s the volunteer assistant coaching job with Miami two summers ago, he and his wife had one-way plane tickets to Switzerland in their possession.

They were four days away from returning to Mauron’s homeland to pursue a pro-level job when RedHawks general manager David Nies called and asked if he was interested.

A day before their flights were scheduled to depart, Mauron was offered and accepted the hockey-ops position on head coach Anthony Noreen’s staff, his first Division I job.

Then last season, Mauron was promoted to a formal assistant job, beating out numerous qualified candidates.

Under his leadership, Miami’s defensemen and the penalty kill have been completely rejuvenated.

“I just remember on Tuesday talking to Anthony, on Wednesday coming down for a visit and then on Thursday being offered a job, canceling my flight and just moving to Oxford instead that weekend,” Mauron said.

His previous relationship with Nies, who was an assistant coach where Mauron played Division III hockey, was a key reason Mauron was able to get his skate in the door with the Miami coaching staff.

“Interviews are one thing, and interviews are important, but in my hiring experience, the biggest home runs I’ve gotten are when people that I know have worked with this person before and can attest to what they’re like, day in and day out,” Noreen said. “For Lio, that was a home run, just knowing some people that knew him and worked with him, had been around him. It was really as simple as hey, does he mesh with the staff?”

Mauron grew up in a French-speaking household in the small Swiss mountain town of Valeyres-sous-Montagny, a half hour from the France border.

Despite spending his formative years in a soccer-crazed part of the Europe, there was a rink 10 minutes from his house, and his father was a huge hockey fan, so Mauron chose skates over shinpads.

“It was the sport that all the kids would do, all my friends would do, and I just followed along,” Mauron said.

His sister played for the women’s Swiss national team and still plays hockey in Tampa.

At 14, Mauron moved an hour away to much-larger Lausanne to play in the development academy of the city’s team in Switzerland’s National League.

Mauron made the big club in 2012-13, but was injured for part of the season. He dressed for 21 games and scored a goal.

“The Lausanne fans are crazy, and it was a dream come true for me,” Mauron said. “Growing up, it was my dream to play for them, and I got to accomplish that. It was amazing.”

Aged out of juniors in Europe but having one season of eligibility in North America, with his parents’ blessing, Mauron tried out for USHL Youngstown — coached at the time by Noreen — but he didn’t make the team.

Instead he hooked on with NAHL Rio Grande Valley, being fluent in French and German but having only taken English in high school.

“It was really difficult,” Mauron said. “Obviously the language barrier at first was hard and the hockey was different. I really struggled for the first four or five months but figured it towards the end, but I think that really brought a new perspective for me on hockey and the lifestyle. That year was definitely the most difficult I’ve had, hockey-wise, so far.”

At the time, the NCAA considered players who dressed for Swiss pro teams ineligible for joining Division I teams for a full season plus the total number of games they suited up for during that campaign, so essentially he would have lost two years.

Boston area-based Division III Curry College was the only school that showed interest in Mauron, so he enrolled there and racked up 94 points in four years, wearing an ‘A’ his senior season and leading his team with 27 assists.

Nies was an assistant coach there his freshman season.

During his time playing D-3, Curry coach T.J. Manastersky (now the head coach at U Sports’ Brock University), kindled Mauron’s interest in coaching.

“He was ahead of his time in the way he coached — a lot of player-led things — and that’s when I decided coaching was something that I wanted to do,” Mauron said.

After his final season at Curry, during which he finished second on the team in points (34) and was tops in assists (27), 11 clear of the field, Mauron hooked on with ECHL Jacksonville for four games.

A visa issue prevented Mauron from playing in that league the following season, but he joined SPHL Knoxville and went 4-14-18 in 41 games in 2019-20, his only full professional season.

“Playing pro hockey, no matter what the level is, you enjoy it and make the most of it,” Mauron said. “It was fun.”

COVID killed the remainder of Mauron’s season in Knoxville and gave him time to ponder his future in hockey.

“When COVID I hit, I kind of had time to think, and that’s when I decided I wanted to get a head start in coaching, and that’s when I decided to go to Ohio (University),” Mauron said.

OU offers a Master’s in coaching education, and many Division I coaches have earned degrees from that program.

“Being Swiss, in order to get a green card and get a job, you need to show you’re more qualified than Americans, and it’s not just based on your resume, it’s more your diplomas, so I knew if I wanted to coach in college, I’d need to get a Master’s,” Mauron said. “Nies had gone through that program, so I talked to him about it a lot, and that’s how I ended up going there.”

Mauron joined the Ohio U. club staff as an assistant coach for 2020-21 season, but due to COVID, the Bobcats were limited in the number of opponents they could face and struggled to a 6-16 record — their worst campaign since going club in 1973 — followed by the resignation of head coach Cole Bell.

With his future uncertain, OU asked Mauron if he could stick with the program temporarily to facilitate the transition to the Bobcats’ next bench boss, a job he also applied for. In the middle of training camp, Ohio U. hired Mauron as its 15th head coach.

At age 24. With no head coaching experience. Coming out of the pandemic.

“The hockey side, I didn’t think was very hard, but what I found hard at that level was that you manage the whole program,” Mauron said. “So a lot of your job was actually not hockey at all, it’s ticket sales and marketing and running student workers. Doing everything around hockey. So that was a pretty steep learning curve of having to manage a whole program. But hockey itself, I thought, being younger was an advantage because I could relate to the guys, I didn’t have to be a hardass. They trusted that I had their best interests at heart…and they were awesome too. They listened too, they wanted to do well, they wanted to improve. That was honestly the most fun year coaching – it was a great experience.”

And Mauron did make it look easy on the ice. In 2021-22, despite inheriting a team that finished with a .273 save percentage and dealing with the remnants of COVID and its recruiting limitations, the Bobcats improved drastically to 17-15-5.

“Actually pretty similar to last year at Miami where you’re coaching players that you didn’t necessarily recruit, it’s not really your team, but we had a good year, we did a lot better,” Mauron said.

Mauron had intended to move on after one year as the Bobcats’ head coach in favor of the NCAA, but the following season, OU won 30 games and advanced to the national semifinals. A year later his Ohio University team returned to the semis and lost to the same Adrian team that had bounced the Bobcats a year earlier.

With three years of ACHA head coaching experience on his resume and still just 30 years old, Mauron decided to accept a pro coaching offer in Switzerland in the summer of 2024.

He and his wife, Sophie, had sold all of their property and were reduced to two hockey bags, which they planned to bring back to Europe.

Then Nies called and prior to Mauron taking the ultimate leap of faith and heading to Oxford to accept a hockey ops job instead, he needed to have a conversation with his spouse, who had quit her job in anticipation of returning to Europe.

“At first it was a little bit of a difficult conversation, but I think when we got to Oxford and we saw the town and the people that we work with, she was excited,” Mauron said. “I explained to her that the vision that Anthony and the staff had for the program and the plan that’s in place to get back toward the top and the opportunity for me – and obviously the first year was going to be difficult but we could see that there was the possibility to move up after a year, whether it was at Miami or somewhere else, that made sense for my career, and it was an investment that we were ready to make. And ultimately, I didn’t have to take the job, I could’ve still gone to Switzerland, but she was on board with it.”

But Noreen said that just because Mauron was with the team in 2024-25 did not earn him favoritism to earn his current gig.

“He made it very clear that he wanted the position, and we made it very clear to him that the position was wide open and we were going to give him the same exact opportunity as every other candidate, and the candidate pool for that position was extremely strong,” Noreen said. “Guys with years of Division I coaching experience, guys with head coaching experience, guys from the USHL, guys from the CHL, NHL experience, there was no shortage of quality candidates. And we tried to treat Lio no different than any other candidate – he had his allotted timed interview and what we wanted to see from him – and he flat-out just won the job. When we were done with that and just talking to (assistant coaches) David (Nies) and Troy (Thibodeau), we just looked at each other, we were just like…listen, he didn’t come into that just saying what we wanted to hear. And I think that would’ve been very easily what he could’ve done. He went the other direction, and hey, here’s some things I think we could do different, here’s what I would change, here’s what my philosophy is, here’s how I see the development of the position, especially with (defense), he was prepared, he was organized, he was direct, he was passionate.”

Mauron said he thought his vision for the defensemen and how to develop them helped win him the job, but he said being on campus during the hiring process and seeing the parade of prospective coaches come to Oxford to interview for the job he wanted first-hand made that period even more stressful.

“It seemed like that aligned really well with how the forwards are going to play, how Anthony wants the team to be, the identity, so for me it felt like a very natural process,” Mauron said.

Mauron’s impact with the RedHawks this season has been felt immediately. Miami was the second-worst defensive team in college hockey in 2024-25, but with Mauron handling the defensemen and the penalty kill this season, the RedHawks have improved to 27th in goals-against per game despite regularly dressing three freshmen and two sophomores on the blue line.

“Much improved but also, a lot of youth back there,” Noreen said. “Obviously he’s done a great job but that’s a hard position for a freshman, for me it’s the hardest position for a freshman to play, and the amount of minutes and the amount of mileage we’ve gotten out of some really young guys on the back end…you look at Vlad (Lukashevich) as one of our more senior guys: Vlad’s a sophomore. It’s not like he’s an upperclassman in college hockey. I just think Lio has done a really good job getting those guys up to speed quickly, he’s done a really good job trusting those guys in major minutes, and I think even a veteran guy like Nicholas Donato has learned a lot from him in a short time, Kyle Aucoin and Owen Lalonde. He’s got something (to) make every one of those guys better. He’s got a plan for every guy to get them to where they want to be.”

Despite battling through their gauntlet league schedule — four straight games against teams ranked third and fourth in the NCAA — the RedHawks are 32-for-35 (91.4 percent) on the penalty kill in their last 12 games.

Part of that is due Noreen to Mauron’s exemplary organizational skills, one of his strongest attributes, Noreen said.

“Extremely organized and detailed,” Noreen said. “Some of the things that he’s done that seem like very tall tasks that he makes look very easy. Part of it is just the work that he puts in, but he is extremely detail oriented, very smart, and with all the different hats he had to wear at the ACHA level has more than prepared him for an opportunity like this.

“He’s a guy that’s awesome to work with – you see him and you smile, and you can’t say that about everybody that you work with and you’re in the trenches with every day. He’s a guy that’s a joy to come to work with every single day. And that’s not to mean that he doesn’t have an edge or a push, he cares as much as anyone, but he’s got a love for life and he’s got a love for what he does, and I think that has a tendency of rubbing off on the people around you.”

Similar to Ohio U., Mauron had to endure a brutal season before heading into the coaching offensive zone, as Miami was coming off a 7-26-3 season prior to his hiring and plummeted to a school-record low mark in 2025-26, so playing Hockey Flippers is something he had already checked off his coaching bucket list.

“When he took this position, he was getting ready to go back to Switzerland with his wife in a great position in professional hockey,” Noreen said. “He turned it down to come stay here in Ohio and take a hockey ops job, which isn’t always the flashiest, high-profile job because he believed what we were doing.

“Him and Sophie – we love them. They’re just the type of people that we want this organization to be about. We wanted good people that believe in this place that want to be here that are here for the right reasons that love it and are going to pour everything that they can into it, and obviously in this game it’s not only about the guy, it’s about the partner as well, and Lio’s wife Sophie has been unbelievable. Obviously what we do is very demanding: The travel’s demanding the hours are demanding, this is not a 9-to-5 job, it’s not even close to that, and what we do in-season, it’s not normal, so that support from home is very important and it’s very evident that he has that.”

And in his first season as an official Division I assistant coach, Miami has made the biggest turnaround in Division I, both in terms of win total and win percentage differential by a wide margin, and the RedHawks are playing to boisterous, sold-out crowds instead of a half-empty arena.

A year ago at this time, Mauron saw a glimpse of how passionate this fanbase can be as they were mired in a seemingly-endless losing streak.

With two weeks remaining in this regular season, the RedHawks are challenging for home ice in the NCHC Tournament and have an outside shot at an at-large bid to the NCAAs.

“I realized that last year in February when we were on the – I don’t even know the losing streak, but we hadn’t won an NCHC game in forever – and we had a game at home, and (Goggin) was almost full,” Mauron said. “People came and wanted to see us. I walked into the coaches’ office and said ‘what are these people doing here?’. They’re just wanting it so bad. I think we owe it to the student body and the community to give them something to cheer about and something to get excited about, and there’s just so much opportunity with this program, it’s just easy to get up and get to work.”

Now nearly a full season into his new role and with two years in Oxford, Mauron’s faith in his move to Oxford has been validated.

“You look at Miami and the campus, the facility and the academics as a package that is probably the best in the country, and then you look at the people, from David Sayler to Brad Okel, both are extremely supportive of the program, Anthony is the best recruiter in college hockey, Troy is the hardest-working coach I’ve ever been around, so you know every detail, and then Nies-y can evaluate talent like no one else,” Mauron said. “To be honest it was an easy decision when I saw that.”

In such a short time, despite being just a few years older than the team, Mauron has earned the players’ respect.

“He pushes them but he cares about them – they know that – he’s smart, they respects him, they see growth based on the things that he’s teaching and talking about,” Noreen said. “I think sometimes because Lio’s soft spoken, maybe his passion doesn’t come through to someone who doesn’t know him, but man, that guy is as caring and as passionate of a person when it comes to this game and when it comes to teaching and development as anyone I’ve met, and it certainly came through.”

Mauron has already overseen major improvements to the team in his short time here, and the future of Miami hockey is brighter than is has been in more than a decade.

But long-term, Noreen envisions grander ventures for his Swiss-born assistant.

“I think he’s going to be a head coach some day, I really do,” Noreen said. “I think he’s going to be a head coach at this level or whatever level he aspires to be. He’s got all of the makings.”

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