Ivo Jan is the new Head Coach at Sterzing

The outgoing coach Clayton Beddoes wants to take another step in his career and therefore won’t be available for the next SKY Alps Hockey League season.
Ivo Jan comes to the Wipptal with the declared objective to continue the successful building work and to emphasisze the promotion of young players. The 42 year old looks back upon a successful career as a forward, during which he dressed the jersey of his home country 61 times and played in 151 DEL and 202 Erste Bank Eishockey Liga and Bundesliga games, totalling 155 goals and 239 scoring points. After calling it quits in 2011, he started his coaching career and in 2012-13 he was hired by Olimpija Ljubljana as an assistant coach. Already in October of the following season he inherited the head coaching job from the resigned Bojan Zajic, taking the club, which at the time was already facing serious problems, to a second-last place finish in the Erste Bank Eishockey League Qualification Round, beating out HC Innsbruck.
In 2013/14 he was hired as an assistant to Todd Björkstrand by the Graz 99ers, with whom he played for four seasons as a forward and became a crowd favourite. He was confirmed the following season and also in the capital of Styria it didn’t take long for him to climb from the assistant to the head coach position, given that Björkstrand was fired after only eight games on October 6th, 2015. Ivo Jan took the helm and after a disastrous start, he led the 99ers to a 10th place finish in the regular season, but the team missed the playoffs by a large margin. Despite that, he was confirmed for the 2016-17 season and had a very good start with the team, before the injury bug wreaked havoc to a roster which was already all too short. This rash of injuries started a downward spiral which in almost no time at all shattered all hopes of making the Pick Round of the Erste Bank Eishockey League. To reverse the downward trend, Ivo Jan was relieved of his duties on December 15th and replaced by Doug Mason, who managed to get the team to the playoffs with a strong Qualification Round, but in the quarter finals the 99ers had no chance against Salzburg.
After a brief stopover as an assistant coach for the Eispiraten Crimmitschau in the DEL2, Ivo Jan takes over as the headcoach of the Broncos. “Ivo Jan is a huge fighter for the cause of young players and this is the reason why he wanted to come to Vipiteno”, the Broncos’ sports director Egon Gschnitzer explains. “He knows the worries and adversities, but also the good sides and the potentials of our hockey, because in Slovenia the situation is very similar. He is an able and patient teacher, who will be a great addition to our club thanks to his wealth of experience both as a player and a coach. We will put a strong team at his disposal, which in this league, thanks to a good mix of young players and older, more experienced cracks, will be able to have its say in the upper half of the standings.”
Ivo Jan says this about the new chapter in his career: “It feels good to come to a club where you feel welcome. I’m excited to come to Vipiteno and begin this new chapter in Italy. I can’t wait for the season to start. It is great to have a young team to work with, because this means that the players are hungry and eager to learn. I hope that we will be able to continue the work which Clayton started two years ago, and that we’ll develop some italian players as prospects for the future.”