- Brad Berry is set to become head coach of the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms
- The 2016 NCAA champion was let go by North Dakota after 10 seasons in 2025
- Read below for the details on Berry’s return and the Phantoms opening
Brad Berry is heading back behind a bench.
The former North Dakota coach is set to take over as head coach of the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms, according to Brad Elliott Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald. The two sides are finalizing a deal, with an announcement expected in the coming days.
Youngstown had a vacancy to fill. Previous coach Ryan Ward is off to Harvard to join the Crimson as an assistant, and the Phantoms zeroed in on one of the more decorated names on the market.
Berry, 61, ran North Dakota from 2015-16 through last season. He won a national championship in his very first year in 2016, becoming the first coach in NCAA history to do that in his debut season.
Look back at the title game that kicked off his UND tenure:
That Fighting Hawks team was stacked, with the “CBS Line” of Brock Boeser, Drake Caggiula and Nick Schmaltz driving the offense. Berry wrapped his decade in Grand Forks with a 227-119-35 record and a national coach of the year award before the school moved on from him after the 2024-25 season.
This will be his first shot at running a junior bench. He worked as an assistant at both the AHL and NHL levels earlier in his career, so player development is not foreign territory.
Plenty of benches have changed hands this summer around the game. Berry hands a proud USHL program a coach who already owns a national title.
