MINNEAPOLIS (5/31/01) -- Augsburg College women's hockey coach Jill Pohtilla was recently named to the NCAA Division III Women's Ice Hockey National Committee.

Pohtilla is one of five members of the Division III national committee. Other members are: Frank O'Brien, athletic director at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; Donna Wright, head coach at Wesleyan College (Conn.); Al Bean, athletic director at the University of Southern Maine; and Sean Frazier, athletic director at Manhattanville College (N.Y.).

The national committee will be in charge of the inaugural NCAA Division III women's hockey national championships, which will take place in the 2001-02 season -- the first season that the NCAA will split the national championships into separate tournaments for Division I and Division III schools.

In 2000-01, Pohtilla was on the West Region advisory committee for the inaugural NCAA women's hockey national championships, which was a National Collegiate (all-divisions) affair. She also served on the selection committee for the American Women's College Hockey Alliance's Division III national tournament in 2000-01.

Pohtilla has coached women's hockey at Augsburg since the program was established in the 1995-96 season as the first varsity women's hockey program among Minnesota colleges and universities. She has accumulated a 95-51-5 record (53-37-2 against varsity opponents) in her six seasons at Augsburg. Pohtilla's Auggies were a part of the first AWCHA Division III national championship tournament in 1999-2000, when the Auggies finished second in the nation. Under her guidance, the Auggies won a share of the first two Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference women's hockey championships, in 1998-99 and 1999-2000.

Pohtilla has been one of the leaders of the women's hockey community in Minnesota for the past two decades, as a player, coach and advocate. In 1998, the Minnesota Coalition to Promote Women In Athletic Leadership awarded Pohtilla with its "Breaking Barriers Award" on National Girls and Women in Sports Day for her work in promoting women's hockey in the state.

She currently is the secretary/treasurer of the American Women's Hockey Coaches Association and is a member of the American Hockey Coaches Association's awards committee. She is also a member of the Melopmene Institute and chairs the MIAC women's hockey coaches committee.

In 1997 and 1998, Pohtilla served as a coach for the United States Olympic Women's Hockey Development Camp in Lake Placid, N.Y., one of a handful of coaches selected by current U.S. Olympic women's hockey head coach Ben Smith. Pohtilla was the only Division III coach to work at the camp in 1998.

In addition to her coaching duties at Augsburg, she also serves as the recruiting coordinator for the college's women's athletic department.