Coaching Staff

A lifelong resident of the Fox Valley, Murphy has deep hockey roots. He coached in the Fox Valley Youth Hockey program for nearly a decade including the varsity Blades team from 1996-2002, the AAHA program, and has also served on the AAHA Board of Directors.

His passion for hockey, building teams, working with high schoolers, bridging the gap between the high school co-op schools as well as the youth program, and his experience and organizational skills make Coach Murphy a great fit for this position.

Coach Murphy is married to Tina and they have six kids. He is the Vice President at Security Luebke Roofing in Appleton.

Coach Stauber has coached the Stars for two years and would like to see the program compete for a state tournament appearance in the near future.

As a player, he played for four years of D3 NCAA at UW Superior, one year of Junior A at Fort Frances Lakers (Ontario), and Hermantown High School in Minnesota where he played in the Minnesota State High School hockey tournament.

He says that being involved with the Stars program the last few years has been extremely rewarding. Everyone involved in the program is passionate about improving the experience for the kids. 

He lives in Appleton with his wife Mikaela and two daughters.

Coach Watson has coached the Stars for three years.

As a player, he played four years of D1 NCAA at Michigan Tech University. He played four years of Juniors with the Waterloo Black Hawks and Madison Capitols of the USHL and the Vernon Vipers of the BCHL. He played high school hockey at Appleton United, where two of those years were also spent playing on Team Wisconsin.

Coach Van Zeeland played for the Stars from 2016-2020, and moved on to the NA3HL for a season with the Oregon tradesmen. Following that he played for the Fox Cities Ice Dogs for two years and then took up coaching, where he started with the fox river phoenix. His hobbies outside of hockey are hunting fishing and my job as a HVAC/Boiler Technician.

Coach Devalk played for the Stars from 2015-2019 and was team captain during the '18-'19 season. He then played junior hockey for the Vegas T-Birds from 2019-2021 in the WSHL and USPHL Premier leagues. He also helps to coach the Kimberly lacrosse team.

Coach Janssen , or Janny, as many people within the hockey community call him is looking forward to joining the Fox Cities Star coaching staff. He grew up playing hockey in Appleton for AAHA and then Appleton United. He then moved on to Saint Norbert College where he played JV hockey as well as helping coach Appleton United. He has been a part of the Appleton United staff since 2011. He graduated from Saint Norbert in 2014 and has been working at many different companies around Appleton; Heartland Label Printers, VF Corporation/Jansport, Thrivent, and he now works at Accurate Appraisal.

He's looking forward to meeting everyone and getting to work with all the kids to help them grow as hockey players and young men.