St. Cloud State University assistant hockey coach Clark Kuster had a unique Mother’s Day gift for his mom Debbie in May 2025.
His first appearance in a cap and gown.
And a long-promised diploma.
Kuster never attended his high school graduation, because he was playing junior hockey nearly 300 miles away from his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. He also never walked across the stage after receiving his bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. Cloud State.
But when he began his graduate program during his final year as an SCSU student-athlete in 2019, he promised his mom, a retired teacher, that he would participate in Commencement when he completed his master’s degree.
Kuster put his master’s in educational administration and leadership on hold after leaving campus in 2020. But once he was entering his second year as an SCSU assistant coach in 2024-25, he felt it was time to finish what he started.
He didn’t tell anyone when he began taking classes again, eventually telling his girlfriend Kendal, who was a big source of support as he navigated the balance of school and coaching.
Even Kuster’s fellow coaches on the SCSU staff had no idea until he was nearing graduation.
“I got to the spring semester and only had two classes to take to graduate,” Kuster said. “I was going to finish it and walk at graduation; now I just needed to find a way to get my mom here.”
Kuster clued in his sister Brittney and his dad Joe to help him pull off the surprise. Spring 2025 Commencement happened to fall on Mother’s Day weekend, so he used the holiday as an excuse for the family to fly to Minnesota and visit.
“I told her we were going to dinner that day, so she’d be dressed up and ready to go,” Kuster recalled. “I walked out with my cap and gown on, and she didn’t even know what was happening. She thought it was a joke.”
Debbie was initially shocked before happily joining to watch Kuster receive his diploma.
“It was a pretty awesome Mother’s Day gift; I obviously did it for myself, but I really wanted to do it for her,” Kuster said. “As you get older you realize walking at graduation is important, so it was really important for me to do that.”
It also serves as a great example for the current student-athletes 30-year-old Kuster helps mentor.
“We are really proud of him,” said SCSU head coach Brett Larson. “There’s a high workload as an assistant coach, so for him to do school at the same time is really impressive.”
Passionate Husky
Kuster’s road to St. Cloud began when he left his native St. Louis to play junior hockey for the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders of the United States Hockey League (USHL) in 2012-13.
During his first season in Iowa, he spoke with former SCSU assistant coaches Garrett Raboin and Mike Gibbons about making a trip to St. Cloud.
“After getting a feel for the players and people, the culture seemed like a great fit for me as a person,” Kuster said. “I committed a day or two after the visit. It was my first visit, and I had a few more lined up, but I knew this is where I wanted to be.”
Kuster played two more years for the RoughRiders, unfortunately tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his knee in his final USHL game. He played in two games his freshman season at SCSU in 2015-16 before taking a redshirt season, allowing himself to recover from a herniated disk in his back.
“We had some really good teams; it was fun to be a part of even if I didn’t play as much as anyone would want,” Kuster said. “I was fortunate to wear a letter (as an assistant captain) my last year and play in a majority of the games. I learned a lot through those experiences that I use now.”
Kuster said he wouldn’t trade those trials of injury and limited playing time, because they played a huge role in his development as a person and future coach.
After playing in 27 games during his senior season for SCSU in 2019-20, Kuster played 43 games in the Southern Professional Hockey League for the Pensacola Ice Flyers in 2020-21. But after the season, he knew it was time to pursue his coaching ambitions.
“The first person I called even before my parents was SCSU assistant coach Nick Oliver,” Kuster said. “I told him I was done playing and I was ready to start coaching. He was fired up and said he would start making some calls to help me out. A week or two later I got a call from St. Cloud Norsemen head coach Corey Millen that they needed a coach. I didn’t hesitate; it was an easy transition being in a city I already knew, and I had lot of people still in the area that I was friends with.”
Oliver also set off a chain of events that led to Kuster joining the SCSU staff only a year later. When Oliver left to take a job as head coach of the USHL’s Fargo Force, SCSU’s Director of Hockey Operations R.J. Enga took over Oliver’s assistant coach role.
That left an opening for a new director of hockey ops, and Larson, who coached Kuster during his final two seasons at SCSU, gave him a call.
“I thought a lot of him as a person when I coached him … his character was so high end, and he always put the team first,” Larson said. “I wanted a Husky on the staff; Nick had been the only Husky on the staff at the time, and getting a guy like Clark who really cares about this program and knows what it’s like to live and play here was really important.”
Kuster’s initial answer was no. With a position that deals mainly with scheduling and logistics, it didn’t seem like a traditional path for someone looking to move up the coaching ranks.
“After I talked with some people and thought about it, to get back to my alma mater and get into college hockey, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up,” Kuster said.
The following year the NCAA approved programs adding another full-time assistant coach, and Larson had no trouble offering Kuster the position.
“Our staff is a little bit older; I wanted that guy on the coaching staff who could connect with players on their level and connect with recruits in a way we can’t,” Larson said. “He knows what it’s like to play here recently and play for me … he has a strength in recruiting because of everything he’s done. Our recruits can see how passionate he is about the Huskies.”
Larson also values Kuster’s ability to share his opinion even when it goes against the grain of the more experienced coaches.
“I love that I have a guy that’s not a yes-man, he’s a guy that will tell me what he really thinks even if I don’t want to hear it,” Larson added. “He’s really grown into that in a short amount of time.”
Now over a decade removed from his first visit to St. Cloud, Kuster gets to play a major role in developing the next generation of Huskies.
“We truly want what’s best for them,” Kuster said. “We’re willing to do whatever we can to help them get to the next level … it’s fun to find guys that fit our culture and really want to be here.”
