When an alumna donated a rumored $4 million dollars earmarked for expansion of women’s sports opportunities at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), it seemed natural that one of the first programs added was women’s hockey. The university already fields a men’s hockey team and has their own rink, so few structural changes were necessary.
One big missing piece at the Kern Center, the recreation facility on campus that houses the ice rink in the basement, was a need for women’s locker rooms and additional coaches offices in order to immediately add five new women’s teams – lacrosse, hockey, swim, golf and bowling – as well as expand their women’s track and field options.
The MSOE men’s team has had varsity status since the 1998-99 season and play in the Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA), where it is expected the women will play.
The announcement of the monetary gift and women’s sports expansion was made in late 2021 – not an ideal time to be searching for a hockey coach. According to Athletic Director Brian Miller, the university wanted to give the new head coach as long as possible to be in their role before the puck drops on their first game, but the coaching search committee also discussed the possible need for extending or delaying the search until the end of the 2021-22 collegiate hockey season, when coaches would be more likely to apply and be available.
It turned out to be serendipitous that Chad Davis was available. Davis spent two seasons coaching at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where he was named 2019 CHA Coach of the Year. Before that, he spent seven years as the head coach at Division III Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan.
He carried a 150-37-10 record while there. His .787 winning percentage was second-best among all Division III coaches during that time and third best in Division III history. His teams won NCHA regular-season championship in four consecutive seasons (2015-18) and the conference tournament title three times (2016-18). The Bulldogs made three consecutive NCAA tournament appearances from 2016-18 and finished as the national runners-up in 2017. Davis was named the AHCA/CCM Coach of the Year during the same season.
The combination of experience at a DIII school where he brought the team to national prominence and knowledge of how to recruit student-athletes to a STEM school that Davis garnered at RIT made him a near perfect fit for this role.
For his part, Davis is excited to be back behind the bench and relishes the idea of helping to build something from scratch. He and the players he recruits will create the work ethic and culture of what it means to be a women’s hockey player at MSOE.
“I’m super excited about the opportunity. MSOE is very student-athlete-friendly. They have a really good foundation. I can see that the institution is really investing in athletics. I think it’s a perfect storm. You can see they have the infrastructure and passion to do it. When you put that all together, you can have a very successful program… Everything is new and you’re able to create this vision and this path,” he said.
Vice President of Enrollment Management And Student Services Timothy A. Valley joked about needing to pinch himself to verify that the donation that has made this expansion possible is real and that things have gone so smoothly in exercising the plan to make expansion possible. He gave credit to the Athletic Department, coaching staffs, but also pointed out that support for student-athletes from their professors has been unwavering. Academics are still the primary focus at MSOE, but, he said, this process has been a big, university-wide initiative and commitment.
There were discussions about what women’s programs to add, but Valle said hockey was an obvious and easy choice.
“We have our own rink and this is a growing and expanding sport. So it just seemed like a natural fit that we would expand the hockey,” he said.
Davis has started recruiting for the new program and Miller said he’s seen women’s hockey players in the Kern Center and visiting campus. Over the past two decades, MSOE has expanded their academic offerings and extended their national profile. That means that while Davis has a hotbed of hockey to recruit from in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota, Miller, who is also the men’s basketball coach, said the Engineer sports teams are made up of players from across the country.
There are nine other Division III women’s hockey programs in Wisconsin, but MSOE offers an urban campus in downtown Milwaukee with on-campus facilities, a highly-rated, specialized academic program and now a well-respected coach. There is one other program, Concordia (WI) located in the far North Milwaukee suburbs, but this puts MSOE in a pretty singular spot to recruit from not just local programs, but also from the greater hockey hotbed Chicago-area, long a large recruiting base for MSOE regardless of athletics.
“It’s about finding the right people to build that successful culture. You can create this environment that is going to be super successful, but enjoyable, too. That’s really appealing to me,” said Davis.
Davis said he expects to have a team to field next season, though recognizes they’ll likely compete as an independent. The Raiders will look for a conference to call home, but Davis is ready to start playing and showing what a program like this is capable of.
