When Jimmy Snuggerud laces up his game skates for the last time, probably in early 2025, it will likely mark at least a pause in a lengthy chapter in Minnesota Gopher history.

Snuggerud, who is on track to graduate in 2026, is a rare, three-generation Gopher athlete. His father, Dave Snuggerud, was a star player for the team in the late 1980s before playing pro in the National Hockey League for four years. His grandfather, Jim Westby (Dave’s father-in-law), was a Gopher hockey standout in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Among their accomplishments: Both were members of U.S. national teams and U.S. Olympic teams.

Like his father and maternal grandfather during their playing days, Jimmy appears to be heading for big things. In 2022, the National Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues drafted him in the first round, largely based on his performance over two years in the USA Hockey National Team Development Program, and he has continued the pace as a starting forward for the Gophers. As a sophomore, Snuggerud led the 2023-2024 team in goals scored.

His collegiate success left Gopher hockey fans speculating that Snuggerud would decide to turn pro. In April, however, Jimmy handed them good news: He will return for the coming season, in large part because the prospect of leading the Gophers to their first national championship in two decades was too strong an inducement.

“The year I was born (2004) was the last year they won a national championship,” he says. “They haven’t won it in a long time, and I think we have the team to do it this year.”

Jimmy says he weighed offers from several schools before deciding to follow in his family’s footsteps at the U of M. This is in sharp contrast to the 1950s, when Head Coach John Mariucci built a system focused on Minnesota talent alone.

As his grandfather explains, “John Mariucci did not recruit. It was expected that (high school) hockey players would go to the University of Minnesota.”

Westby played hockey at Minneapolis South High School, where he scored one of the most notable goals in State High School Hockey Tournament history when, in the 11th overtime, he scored the tournament-winning shot against Thief River Falls. He played one year for the Gophers, in 1958, before playing minor league hockey in Canada and joining the U.S. National Team. He returned to the U of M for the 1961-62 and 1962-63 seasons, when he also received a degree in recreation.

The expectation that Minnesota boys should only play for the Gophers eased by the time Dave graduated from Hopkins High School in 1984. After spending a year playing for the Minneapolis Stars in the United States Hockey League, he was ready to start his collegiate career. Dave Snuggerud says Miami University of Ohio offered him a full-ride scholarship that was more than the one offered by the U of M. “Deciding between the two,” he recalls, “it just seemed like a natural goal, being born and raised in Minnesota, to play at the University of Minnesota.”

The story of the Snuggerud/Westby relationship with the U of M is about hockey, but it’s also about a broader commitment to the school. After Jim Westby returned to the University to play and earn a degree in 1963, he launched a 27-year career as a Minneapolis police officer, followed by six years working on gambling enforcement for the State of Minnesota. Dave Snuggerud, after playing in the NHL, came back to the U of M to earn a master’s degree in education and embark on a career as a teacher and coach.

Dave was a science teacher at Wayzata East Middle School before moving to Chaska, where he and his wife, Ann, raised four kids and where Dave was the school’s head hockey coach for 15 years. Then, 11 years ago, he and several other founders launched a private K-8 school, Breakaway Academy. “We are a traditional school by teaching math, science, social studies, and language arts,” he says. “We emphasize character-building, which is just teaching kids to persevere, put away their phones, and say please and thank you. And then we’re a hockey training facility.” He says the school’s enrollment has grown from 40 to 400 in a decade.

Jimmy says he’s reasonably sure that his coming junior season on the Gophers will be his last before going pro. His academic work has focused on business marketing and education, and he assumes that someday he will probably return to the University, as his father and grandfather did, to pursue further studies.

Jimmy also says his decision to enroll at the University of Minnesota was his own. “I knew that my dad and my grandpa had played here and made their marks, but there wasn’t much influence from them,” he says. “I was thinking about going to North Dakota or Denver or Wisconsin, but when it came down to it, the history and the program here—and the team we were going to have—were all so good. It’s just such an elite program here that it’s hard to say no.”

Dave points out that playing hockey at the U of M also provides access to a ready professional network once playing days are over. “The networking is something you don’t consider when you’re a high school kid going to Minnesota,” he says. “But after you get here and you establish yourself as a Gopher hockey player, you start to meet a lot of great alumni that are in your corner and want to help you out because they’re still fans of Gopher sports. The Gopher alumni network helped me get established in the business world, even though I’m a schoolteacher.” Jimmy believes that network could be beneficial to him too once his playing days are over.

“I hadn’t thought about it, but I think all three of us had decisions to make about moving on with our careers or coming back to the great experience that the University of Minnesota provides,” Dave Snuggerud says.

“We were able to get a great education and establish the Snuggerud name locally in the Twin Cities. It’s benefitted us with the stories we’re able to share—and it makes for great talking points at Christmastime for all of us.”

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