Momentum for Varsity Women's Hockey?
Santa and the regents recommend a feasibility study for varsity Women's hockey, the first (required) step. Could it finally happen? It's long overdue, but it sounds like the right people are behind it.
itshappening.gif !
LFG!!!! I can't believe OSU is the best team in the country - we need to end that.
As a father of a 13yo daughter who plays hockey I think this is awesome news. Not that I have any realistic expectations that my daughter would be able to play D1 (she only started tying her own skates last year ha) but it’s nice to dream.
I have a 16-year-old niece who is in boarding school with potential for D1. I assume this will happen too late for her, unfortunately, unless she transfers. It would be amazing to see her in maize and blue and a winged helmet.
And Seth's Daughter plays and it would just be so inspiring and the costs be damned because Ohio does it so good and Michigan should do this because we have to have anything and everything
yadda
yadda
yadda
I get it - the MHSAA doesn't sponsor girls ice hockey ---- yet ---- but::
- (1) there's a lot of young Michigan resident women who do play the sport,
- (2) Michigan's a pretty big hockey state,
- (3) as of the moment, no Michigan University sponsors the sport at the NCAA level, and
- (4) 4 of Michigan's 5 other "hockey school" conference-mates sponsor the sport.
Now, yes, there's the issues of $$$ and facilities. The latter being the more serious (Michigan can very likely find the $$$ if they want to).
But Michigan (or MSU, or somebody) should really try to sponsor women's hockey. It's a lot like men's lacrosse 10 years ago. It's a sport that should be sponsored by a Michigan school, simply from the POV of serving the residents of a state. A potential place for them to play the sport in their college years.
#3 is not true; Adrian College sponsors the sport at the NCAA level.
I assume you meant "NCAA Division I level" instead?
Ah --- yes, I forgot about them at D3. You are right. +1.
Honestly, who cares if mhsaa sponsors it. There's a strong girls hs program in the state with both a Div 1 and Div 2 level in spite of mhsaa's idiocy. We also have a strong tier 1 in program with the usual suspects (Little Caesars, Honey baked, Belle Tire, Fox Motors, etc) sponsoring nationally competitive teams. The issue has never been pool of players within the state. It's always been a triple headed monster of cost of Div 1, desire to have Yost as the home rink to maintain parity with the mens team, and balance with Title 9 scholarship limits.
What men’s sport would need to be added to counter the scholarships needed for women’s ice hockey? Men’s volleyball?
That would be part of the feasibility study, correct? And does the university currently max out scholarships on all men's sports? Could they add scholarships to existing sports?
Most men's sports are head count sports and the scholarships are limited by the ncaa, not the school. You can't bank a few scholarships from football and give them to another sport.
Or men's rowing.
Are they allowed to remove a women's sport?
Adrian has this - women’s hockey and men’s volleyball. Or course, they also have varsity bass fishing.
Adrian is also D3 which significantly reduces the Title 9 burden because there's no scholarships involved.
If you look at the Women's Frozen Four this year, you have two B1G teams and Colgate and Clarkson. I'm not sure what the facilities are like at Ohio State and Wisconsin, but Colgate (enrollment 3,000) and Clarkson (enrollment 3,400) share facilities with equally strong men's teams, just one sheet of ice. The athletic budgets for these two upstate New York schools are a fraction of the the other Frozen Four teams, and yet, there they were competing against schools 10x their size.
It seems easily doable from both a facilities and financial perspective.
How many varsity sports do Colgate & Clarkson have?
Yost has one sheet of ice and one locker room. It needs expansion, but there's no room to expand, unless they do away with a parking lot.
Build a new ice hockey facility and use yost for something else or just do away with it entirely
That's not going to happen. They should get rid of the parking lot before they do that.
This is blasphemy...
What?! Do away with Yost? Bolivia for you.
Is this a joke?
At what cost?
Will financial attention to this non-revenue generating venture come at the cost of financial attention that could be put toward the NIL funding of sports that can sustain themselves financially?
Women's sports at Michigan are already very well represented and I would prefer to see the $ get put back into softballs return, women's basketball making a final 4, continued Field Hockey success, Golf, Tennis.
Women's Hockey is at best niche. Wants and Needs are two different things. If Stephen Ross wants to fund this and it does not come at the cost of his contributions to Men's sports... ok I guess.
Women's hockey is growing in popularity. A number of the new professional league games have hit 10,000 attendance numbers - over 13k at a game in Detroit this month. It's a little bigger than niche.
If two minutes of research gave me accurate information, there is an 18 scholarship limit. You can probably run a quality program for a couple million a year if the facilities are in place.
Realistically, I think you go the route that Penn State went and Illinois was trying to go -- find the right donors to fund the necessary facilities and assemble a collection of boosters that will reliably contribute to support the running of the program.
It is absolutely possible that there are donors out there that would fund hockey and only hockey. I'm not wealthy but if I had some money I'd donate. I can't think of any circumstance where I would do the same for the football or basketball programs.
Yeah I always remain pretty indifferent to having a womens team. Pretty expensive sport to add for the benefit of a few athletes and a few hundred fans.
The point is well taken that the University’s money might be better spent elsewhere, but you can’t possibly argue that women’s hockey is “too niche” and in the same breath support resources for collegiate softball, field hockey, tennis, and golf. It’s all niche. There are only two athletics programs at Michigan that are not.
If the donors are there to get the program off the ground and to support an expansion of Yost and/or a complementary facility, why not go for it? The University has pretty swanky facilities for many non-revenue sports. What’s one more?
The counterfactual I propose is what things might have looked like this year had Michigan had a team ready to compete with the Buckeyes for women’s hockey preeminence. When the men’s basketball team was in the dumpster and the men’s hockey team was scuffling a little bit, Michigan fans were looking for some excitement to keep the buzz from the CFP going. Wouldn’t Yost have filled up when the Buckeye ladies rolled into town? I kinda think it would have…
Id only argue its the combination of niche + high start up costs (new arena) + high annual cost that makes it that way to me. If some rich booster wants to fund a huge chunk of it then sure
Why is “do away with a parking lot” even a hard decision? Build a locker room and dig a parking garage underneath it. Or build a garage and put a locker room on top of it. Whatever. It will be a little oddly shaped having both lockers off one end of the ice but seems like a win win otherwise.
They really ought to do this whether or not they start women’s hockey.
At Colgate, there are 25 Division 1 sports (counting I-AA for football). Clarkson competes in D1 for only men's and women's hockey; DIII for all other sports.
OK, 24.74. It's less than our 29.
I'm not trying to knock Colgate & Clarkson - and their accomplishment in reaching the Women's Frozen Four - but women's ice hockey now is a bit like women's basketball in the 1980s and 1990s. There's a handful of programs (OSU, Wisc, Minnesota, Clarkson for hockey --- Tennessee, UConn, USC and Louisiana Tech for basketball) that win basically ALL the titles.
The sport will mature. If schools like Michigan (and ND, both of them) start programs, and if already existant programs like PSU (and BC and BU, among others) work at it more - the sport will get there.
But for now, Clarkson can be like Louisiana Tech women's hoops once was. A consistent Final Four team despite being a considerably smaller insitution.
If you look at the Women's Frozen Four this year...
Then the rest of those watching would make up a nice hand of Poker.
It's not often I get to say this on a Michigan site, but as somebody who grew up watching the ECAC: cluck farkson. I would love to see them get beat up a bit more often, in any sport, and especially by Michigan. :)
So what I’m seeing is it took a Canadian school president to make the push? There’s some poetry in that.
Santa doesn't mess around.
The interesting thing is that Denise Illitch appears to be backing this. Stephen Ross is our go-to example of the Michigan money cannon, but if Illitch thinks she can seed this with some $$$, it builds fan interest that ends up helping the Red Wings expand their fan base and return some revenue to her pockets. This sounds like a win-win situation.
If Denise makes a double dip of funding a UM women's program while simultaneously getting a pwhl franchise here, I'm in
March 28th, 2024 at 10:02 PM ^
That'd be ideal. Renovated arena/facilities that can host both Michigan women's hockey and a PWHL team. The main problem getting a team is venue - LCA is a little big and frankly might not have the capacity to handle a *third* professional sport happening in the same timeframe. Interest certainly isn't an issue: Detroit set the record for women's hockey attendance during the one off game here.
March 28th, 2024 at 10:12 PM ^
This was my thought. Hell, let’s build a new facility to house both a Michigan varsity team and a PWHL franchise. Make it the place to be for Women’s hockey.
March 29th, 2024 at 12:44 PM ^
Tell her to start spending on the Tigers while she’s at it. 21st payroll in the MLB while having a shot at the division crown in a weak AL Central is a letdown to the fans. There were some free agents they could’ve taken a shot at that they never got involved for. They at least need to be closer to average payroll.
The question of Yost Ice Arena needs to be addressed simultaneously.
Also, what is happening with the former Indoor Track Building? Could it be converted to an ice arena?
Keeping the game day experience at Yost is non-negotiable to me. A women's team should be able to use the same facility for game day, and have their own dedicated locker room. Upgrading locker rooms for both hosts and visitors (including tournament capacity) should be managable with additions around the existing building.
The next question is where to put an additional sheet of ice and facilities for practice and training. That's a bit more challenging depending on the goals and what is best for the athletes. To me, the best solution revolves around replacing surface parking with one or more parking structures, and keeping all of hockey in the same general area.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The ideal solution would involve both a locker-room expansion of Yost and the establishment of a separate practice facility. The first thing should probably happen anyway, varsity women’s program or not. The existing club teams and the various teams that visit Yost would appreciate that.
The second piece, the practice facility, seems trickier. I wonder if there is space near the new lacrosse and track facilities to put a sheet of ice. I’ve also heard the idea floated that the old coliseum, where the hockey team used to play, could be reconverted. Not sure if that idea has any legs though.
Does gymnastics use the old coliseum? My son and I walked in the building I think was the old coliseum and it appeared that way but maybe we weren’t where we thought we were?
I think gymnastics does use that building, or at least a part of it. So yes, any kind of hockey-oriented renovation of the facility would impact gymnastics. Figuring a way to not set back the gymnastics programs would have to be part of that hypothetical.
Duplicate post.
My youngest daughter is going to love this.
Would love to see it for the women pucksters !
Men's Water Polo would be easy/cheap to add (and it's played at Michigan High Schools).