Daily: Michigan Women's Hockey hopes for Varsity status
Very interesting read.
Very interesting to see how close Michigan came to having a women's team in the 90s. There's even a quote from DB on the prospects of adding women's hockey.
http://www.michigandaily.com/sports/womens-hockey-persists-club-sport
Wisconsin is right there with MN.
I saw your comment in the thread yesterday.
Why do you hate sports at Michigan that aren't Football and Men's Basketball?
Clark has a point. All these sports are huge losers. Nothing wrong with club sports funding themselves.
When I was in school there was a women's sport advertising full ride scholarships in the DIAG. They still could barely fill the roster. How absurd is that?
Exactly. Most people don't care about distance running, but I live and breath distance running. Being a dick to those who care about things you don't care about just shows your immaturity.
Pardon me if this is an ignorant question, but how would this affect Title IX? Would they have to pop a men's sport up to varsity too? Or just give more scholarships to the already existing male athletes? Or just knock down scholarships for other women's sports and re-distribute them amongst hockey?
Promoting the longtime club sport to varsity status would present a couple of issues. First is Title IX, which could require the school to add another men’s sport to accompany the addition of women’s varsity hockey.
If we did this at some point, I would actually not mind if they did it in a fashion similar to what the article mentioned regarding Ohio State's program. As described, it has definite logistic obstacles despite having two rinks (we would need to build the second one), but from the sound of things, they've made a go at developing it all the same and are willing to invest in good equipment and efficient travel (as OSU has to travel quite a bit and a team in Ann Arbor would as well) in the knowledge of the revenue issue. In other words, they have attempted to set the team up for success down the road, and that's how I believe we should go about it if we can get this off the ground.
If we don't have it soon, I bet we'll add them whenever Yost is finally closed up and the men move to a new rink. That facility would surely be built with the capacity for both teams.
And I never realized Michigan only has two D-III women's hockey programs and that's it. Bizarre for a state that I consider to be in the 'Big 3' for hockey with Minnesota and New York. I have to imagine we'd be competitive on home-state talent alone
In the late 90s-early 00s (I think it was ~98-99 or thereabouts) the push was really strong for a women's program, and they had a few games directly after men's games at Yost. I stayed for one of them, as did a lot of other people. Honestly, it was novel, but not overwhelming.
Let's face it, there are a lot of legitimate questions about making it a varsity sport. There are, what, about five men's programs that actually break even on hockey, or so the common knowledge was a few years back. It's an equipment-intensive, facility-intensive sport that costs a great deal of money just for one team. Yost can't handle both programs, even with the increased locker room space from the last few renovations. Building a new facility for this? Where and why?
It's a cool idea, but at some point, we have to realize not every non-revenue sport is worth pouring a ton of money into. If we can support a great club program, there's nothing wrong with that. We already have an absurdly full slate of these programs. How many is too many?
Women's hockey would be a novel thing for a little bit, but it would probably be one of the biggest dead weights to the athletic department right away. Hockey is definitely an expensive varsity sport and few men's teams even make money - I think OSU and MSU are both losing money on it right now (or were as of a few years ago).
If it costs $750k to run the team for a year, that's probably a solid $500k loss (at best) on the books right there for a school that already offers a multitude of varsity sports
I prefer to believe that the city of Duluth does not have any NCAA hockey teams (still too soon)
Yes, I too remember that time we were supposed to play in the national title game against...someone? And then we had to forfeit or something
Would it be overly difficult for them to play at the AA Ice Cube during the season when/if Michigan is at home, and at Yost when the Men's team is away?
In general though, I do agree with you Bando. Adding Hockey isnt like adding a women's soccer team when all you need is a pitch and a locker room. I can't see DB springing for a new ice rink either at the new South athletic campus on State St. or anywhere on North unless they partnered with the USNTDP to build a joint facility. Is there a shortage of ice space in the greater area?
I sat next to DB at an alumni dinner a month or so ago and being the father of a baby girl and former hockey play, I've been really interested in even the possibility that our daughter could play varsity hockey at Michian. So I asked Dave if that was anywhere on the horizon and he pretty candidly said "not at all."
I'd like to see it happen, and I don't care if there are no open skates at Yost, the AD already makes boatloads of money. Make Yost only mens and womens varsity Michigan hockey only. I can't imagnie that the mens team needs it 18 hours/day.
Although not varsity, of course, we've actually had one for about four years now. They've got an event coming up at the Saline Library and tryouts are in September, I believe. They even compete for various cups with other schools - I believe Michigan State and a few other Big Ten schools have quidditch teams, for starters. It's amazing to see the impact of the Harry Potter books and films on pop culture really, where we've managed to reimagine and even play (and develop a league for) something devised for literary purposes.
Dude why are you such an asshole? Just wondering.
Quidditch like in the movie "The Internship", or has Michigan or MIT developed flying brooms now? THAT would be varsity. I'd pay to see that. Not sure about the rest of you.
Add mens volleyball as well.
Make this happen!
Women's hockey and Men's volleyball would be great additions.
What is stopping women players from trying out from the current U team? If you're good enough you make it. If not you're not as good an athelete.