Women's hockey?

I was thinking it's more of a Michigan jersey sales in Ohio on this one.

We finished in 42nd place and didn’t make the tournament 

i asked seth this below, but i'll also ask you my totally ignorant question...why would we need another sheet of ice?  it's mentioned by a couple other comments here, but i don't quite get why that would be the case? 

is it ice time for games and practices (which seems solvable), or do the women play on a different ice size, or something else entirely?

I don't think another sheet of ice is necessary. There are a lot of programs that support both Men's and Women's hockey at a successful Division 1 level. Small schools without revenue from football and basketball have done quite well for both men's and women's teams: Clarkson (national champs women last year), Colgate (women's national champ runner-up), Union College, Quinnipiac, etc.

Is girls hockey big in Michigan? That may be the barrier as there are numerous outlets for girls hockey in New England that feeds the women's collegiate programs there.

I think it is a locker room issue.  As I recall, Yost does not have an extra one for a women's team.

We have women’s lacrosse.

Looked at the wiki link. Interesting that Rutgers also has all 14 women’s sports. But Michigan and OSU are the only ones to have all 14 for men and women.

Ideally if Michigan launched a varsity team, MSU would as well, but getting MSU to give a shit about any women's sport is pulling teeth.

I don't even get the impression MSU cares about most of their men's sports - including their hockey team - so I'm guessing women's hockey is pretty far down their to-do list

Thanks for the detailed response.  And while I agree that hockey is an expensive sport, complaining about a lack of funds at a place like Michigan is a poor excuse for inaction.  If the AD made it known that they wanted to fund a women's team, I am sure they can find some alumni that could help make that happen.  How about leveraging Michael Schofield, who is married to Olympian Kendall Coyne-Schofield, to get some attention to the issue?  They already have a history of investing in and bringing attention to women's sports.

I know that football is king, but we are about to spend $41 million on a new scoreboard.  For that price you could probably build a new ice arena and finance a women's team for the next 20 years.  I know that it is easy to point to a lack of support currently, but there are a ton of talented young women playing hockey in Michigan, and the sport is growing.  A few years back the excuse was that OSU has a program and hadn't been very successful, so we shouldn't invest in a team.  Well, they just won the women's NCAA championship.  If we haven't done it, it is because we choose not to, not because we can't afford it.

Also, we do have a women's club team, and despite being one of the largest schools with a women's club team, we provide the least financial support to them of almost any school.  Again, it is simply a lack of commitment of any kind to women's hockey.  

thanks, seth, that's really terrific info.

your note re: red not wanting to share the ice is interesting.  i know red still has pull around the program, and he obviously should have a huge voice.  my question is whether he has an official voice?  i assume any formal position he might hold is more ceremonial than in charge of major program decisions...i mean, i don't expect he's working in an office somewhere 40 hours a week.  in any case, i hope he isn't the one keeping this from happening - more michigan hockey is probably an unalloyed good, isn't it?

any thoughts on why we'd need another sheet of ice on campus?  i'm assuming that women's college teams play on the same size ice as their male counterparts, and it seems like you could make the ice time limitations work for both.  the men's and women's hoops teams seem to coexist with one single arena, although courts for practices are obviously cheaper and more readily available than ice rinks.

lastly, you referred to women's hoops as a 'revenue sport,' which is really pretty fascinating.  they may, in fact, be revenue-positive, but the fact that it's even a possibility is just one more testament to what KBA has done here.  really incredible stuff.

Wouldn't the argument that adding a women's hockey team only to be able to add another men's team be valid only in the rare circumstance that there is a balance between the men and women already? Most schools with a football team struggle to achieve equal expense, scholarships, head count, etc. because the numbers for football are so skewed that you would need 3-4 women's sports to equal a football team. 

As more and more young girls play hockey, the demand for having a place to play in college will grow. My initial belief (aside from the politics Seth mentioned, which also prevented soccer from being played at Michigan) is that there were too few high school girls playing to be anything but a New England/Wisconsin/Minnesota outlet.

But, yes, cost is a factor... until you realize they will justify spending $40 million for new scoreboards in Michigan Stadium.

Let's start a gofundme for women's hockey and men's water polo (only club now)!

BY the way the Women's  #7 ranked water polo are a great watch.

The NCAA national championships are coming to Canham this May.

https://mgoblue.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventList?groupCode=WP&linkID=umichse&shopperContext=&caller=&appCode=&RSRC=websportpagepromoonsale&RDAT=wpwncaatickets

I don't think any of these answers are sufficient, because I believe there's enough interest in hockey at Michigan that a women's hockey team would be cash neutral.

It's worth it even if it isn't cash neutral, but I don't think this is about the money. At Michigan, football makes money that funds the rest of the AD. But at numerous cash strapped towns and cities around the country, we subsidize a HS football team - because it's culturally important to us. Track, wrestling, basketball, soccer and soft/baseball are all cheaper, and have varying degrees of cultural import. But football is only cheap for HS kids to play because the town subsidizes it.

This is Michigan, a hockey state. If we care about it culturally, this multimillion dollar AD can fund it. If they do I won't complain about noodles in the big house or 4 hour games for like a decade. The fact that we don't have one is sexist at worst, at best incredibly cheapskate, and probably both.

There’s a link to donate to the team here:

https://www.michiganwomenshockey.com/

They raised $5k on Giving Blue Day last week. One nice thing about getting more support from the Athletic Department would be that they could focus more on academics and athletics and less on fundraising.

My niece was on the team this season. My brother told me they had a road trip to Penn State. They bussed over, played a game that day, stayed in a hotel one night, played another game the next day and bussed back that night because they couldn’t afford another night at the hotel.

 I get it that a varsity women’s hockey team could cost the AD upwards of $5M annually if you were to include full scholarships for everyone. But the team is getting by with something like $2k contributions per player. I wish there was a model that worked for something in between those figures. If the AD could find $100k for the program (instead of $500), that would go a long way. 
I’ve watched some games over the internet and it’s really fun. I would rather watch that on the Big 10 network than a classic Rutgers football game or some dude eating on that Campus Eats show. They just have to keep working to grow the sport.

The ice time at Yost thing is a canard. These women love hockey. They pay to play it. My high school friends on the boys hockey team practiced at 5 AM at the local rink because that’s when they could get time. Yost doesn’t need to be exclusive for the men’s team, and I don’t think it is.