{"id":129574,"date":"2021-10-12T14:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/?p=129574"},"modified":"2021-11-23T13:35:14","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T19:35:14","slug":"college-hockey-community-rising-to-occasion-to-save-teams-looking-to-help-resurrect-robert-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2021\/10\/12\/college-hockey-community-rising-to-occasion-to-save-teams-looking-to-help-resurrect-robert-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"College hockey community rising to occasion to save teams, but should such a responsibility fall on fans?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Derek Schooley was the only coach Robert Morris had for its tenure from 2003 to 2021 (photo: Jason Cohn).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2020-21 season was another typical year for the Robert Morris hockey program.<\/p>\n

The Colonials won Atlantic Hockey\u2019s Western Pod regular-season championship and were within a game of advancing to their seventh straight playoff semifinal appearance. It took an unorthodox playoff format and a double-overtime second game to stop the team, but RMU clearly ranked alongside American International as the class teams in the conference when it swept the postseason awards.<\/p>\n

Nick Prkusic collected the West Co-Player of the Year, and Randy Hernandez was West Rookie of the year. Defenseman Nick Jenny was rated both Best Defenseman and won the Individual Sportsmanship Award within his pod as well, and head coach Derek Schooley, the architect of one of AHA\u2019s most successful programs, won his second Coach of the Year award.<\/p>\n

The program was humming along, which is why it was blindsided so badly when the university announced in May that it was ending hockey<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a flash, one of Atlantic Hockey\u2019s marquee programs was gone, as was College Hockey America\u2019s conference champion women\u2019s program. A hockey hotbed was now without one of its most identifiable assets, and nobody really knew why.<\/p>\n

The reasons for RMU\u2019s erasure are still unclear, but there are signs the Colonials\u2019 dismissal will only be a temporary pause. Neither RMU\u2019s men\u2019s team nor its women\u2019s program will suit up this year, but the athletics department, in conjunction with the Pittsburgh College Hockey Foundation, is halfway to its goal of raising $3 million to reinstate a sustainable program. There is hope on the horizon, even if over $1 million in goals still need to be met by December.<\/p>\n

But the Colonials\u2019 absence will remain conspicuous at a time when some college hockey programs are in a transitional state. RMU was the third program to either disband or suspend its team during this offseason after contraction initially hit the programs at Alaska Anchorage and Alabama Huntsville, and while each have different circumstances, the notable outcomes have led to the need for more awareness about each individual situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sustainability of programs is important and actually more important [than just adding teams],\u201d said Mike Snee, the executive director of College Hockey, Inc. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to have a one step forward, one step backward type of plan. College hockey is what it is because all of the current programs contributed history, and that\u2019s what makes it so exciting. It brings out the passion of the fans, and when programs are dropped or threatened, sustaining growth [in all teams] is the more important part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hockey is a difficult sport to pursue for any program, but its hurdles and expenses are well known at a surface level. Rinks and arenas require specialized overhead for a sport that doesn\u2019t have the same widespread, simplistic appeal as football or basketball, a combination that resulted in a smaller sport situated predominantly in the hockey regions ranging mostly from Minnesota to New England with conferences that aren\u2019t the widely-recognized, all-sports leagues.<\/p>\n

The expenses are a very real conversation, and it was a big reason why the programs in Alaska and Alabama were left exposed during the latest round of realignment. Membership in the same conference stretched a centralized, Minnesota-Great Lakes-Midwest league over 4,000 miles and created fault lines, and the fissures revealed themselves every few years whenever conferences shifted along their tectonic plates.<\/p>\n

\u201cBudgets had to be bigger because it costs what it costs,\u201d said Dr. Cade Smith, the athletics director at Alabama Huntsville. \u201c[Nobody] did any ridiculous things to spend money, but this cost a lot to have it to play where we played, just as it costs what it cost to play soccer. We weren\u2019t wasting money, but the reality of our budget is that a big part of our budget was for hockey. I think I was able to appreciate how well everyone managed their budget [when the team was active].\u201d<\/p>\n

It became too much for their leagues to endure, and this year, the CCHA formed when seven WCHA schools broke away and effectively marooned the two Alaska schools and Alabama Huntsville onto their own islands. It wasn\u2019t the first time those three schools endured a conference breakup, but the WCHA\/CCHA merger following the formation of the Big Ten and NCHC was significantly different for each school.<\/p>\n

Alabama Huntsville, for example, was left without a dance partner when College Hockey America collapsed in 2010. The league only had four teams left in its final year, but Bemidji State\u2019s transfer to the WCHA and Robert Morris and Niagara\u2019s realignment into Atlantic Hockey left the Chargers without a conference. That lack of a league was then the mitigating factor in the university\u2019s decision to drop hockey in 2012.<\/p>\n

The program survived because of its donors, who offered a stay of execution long enough for UAH to join the new WCHA when the Big Ten and NCHC gutted both the WCHA and CCHA. The lifeline, though, came with a major geographical issue because Alaska was joining Alaska Anchorage in the same league, and it was the first time teams from The Last Frontier were in the same conference since the Great West Hockey Conference experiment of the 1980s.<\/p>\n

A nightmare scenario immediately arose, but it was somehow avoided since none of the teams ever made the eight-team postseason in the same year. Huntsville never had to travel to Alaska or vice-versa on short notice, and the only time any of those teams ever hosted a playoff series was the league\u2019s first year when, ironically enough, sixth-seeded Anchorage traveled to third-seeded Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

Avoiding that scenario came with its own caveat, though, because the three teams never won enough to earn a coveted home spot. The travel made things exceptionally more difficult than the localized teams, and it formed another crack when the WCHA\u2019s top tier failed to send more than two teams to a national tournament. Only one team qualified in 2016 and 2017, and it took Bowling Green\u2019s last at-large, bubble spot in 2019 to ensure a second bid for that season.<\/p>\n

Everything kept compounding, and in February, 2020, the seven schools from the Central United States announced their intention to form a new league with Alaska, Alaska Anchorage or Alabama Huntsville. The powder keg exploded, and the three schools thrown a life preserver by the merger of the WCHA and CCHA ended their 2019-2020 season without a home after the 2020-2021 schedule.<\/p>\n

But everything exploded even worse when COVID-19 broke out one month later. Issues around travel and expenses all of a sudden transformed from tightropes and problems to outright disasters, and universities everywhere felt an immediate tightening as the pandemic gripped the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the spring of \u201820, when COVID and everything else happened, there were a lot of things going on where we were trying to figure out where we could save expenses,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe knew it wasn\u2019t looking all that promising for us with the seven schools that left [the WCHA], and that was one thing that we talked about at the time, and that led us to the ultimate decision to discontinue the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alabama Huntsville’s program was saved in 2020 and played the 2020-21 season (photo: Doug Eagan).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All three programs were forced to deal with their own dire straits, but it came during a particularly-severe downsize in Alaska. Funding to the university system was down 40 percent, and the quagmire resulted in a board of regents vote to put it in \u201cfinancial exigency.\u201d The 10-1 decision freed up the state to fire tenured faculty and other staff while enabling the ability to shutter whole programs as part of a larger, $130 million cut by the governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Hockey was placed right in the crosshairs, and even after saving $200K by moving into an on-campus home, the overall situation surrounding funding and a league home led Anchorage to announce it would end its hockey program after the 2020-2021 season. But in the fall, as COVID-19 ravaged its way across the United States, even that became too much of an ask, and Alaska Anchorage, along with Fairbanks, opted out of last season.<\/p>\n

It was a perfect storm, but like UAH, UAA donors and boosters stepped up to the plate to save their respective programs. The board of regents offered Anchorage a path to reinstatement if fundraising could raise two years\u2019 worth of expenses by February of this year, and after the Save Seawolf Hockey movement started breathing life into the program, the NHL\u2019s Seattle Kraken stepped up its support. The deadline was extended into August, and at the end of the month, the Seawolves were successfully reinstated as an independent program for the 2022-2023 season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alex Frye was set to start his sophomore year at Alaska Anchorage in 2020-21 (photo: Chase Burnett\/UAA Athletics).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UAA athletic director Greg Myford could not be reached for comment, but in the team\u2019s formal reinstatement announcement on August 31, he said, \u201cToday is about much more than dollars raised. It\u2019s about hope restored and dreams realized. While the financial support is important and necessary, our community of supporters refused to let the vision for Seawolf hockey fade. A mighty thank you to all who contributed to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing as an independent, though, was not good enough for Alabama Huntsville, which had played without a conference in the interim period between its CHA and WCHA eras. It had to find a home, and after the Chargers opted into the 2020-2021 season, they sought to save their team by applying to both the new CCHA and the 11-team Atlantic Hockey league based out of New England and the greater New York\/Western Pennsylvania area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a pretty good week of fundraising with our donors and supporters and basically bought a year in order to try and find a conference home,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat fundraising – the GoFundMe and everything that people were familiar with – gave us time to try and find a conference home. The two options that were possible were the new CCHA, which I don\u2019t know was named that at the time, and then obviously Atlantic Hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time we got to January, we were ready to submit an official proposal to the Atlantic,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat was after a lot of conversations with [league commissioner Bob Degregorio] and other folks. We made two proposals in the spring. The CCHA got back to us really fast, but Atlantic took a while because [expansion] was not a big focus with everybody trying to finish the season and manage COVID. When we finally got an answer in June, the writing was on the wall for what we knew the answer was going to be. We had a bunch of players that were here, and so we made the decision in the spring to suspend about a month before we found out officially from Atlantic Hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the maelstrom engulfing college hockey when Robert Morris mercurially ended its hockey program in May. It made no sense at the time because the Colonials were a healthy, championship program with a history of dominating Atlantic Hockey. They owned their own arena and won every piece of hardware possible over the last decade, and their built-in rivalries with several teams built support through the highest levels of a hockey-rabid market in Pittsburgh, Pa.<\/p>\n

Their popularity made RMU a common name in the non-serious, water cooler talks around league expansions, and the CHA champion women\u2019s program complemented the men\u2019s team perfectly – and vice-versa. Brianne McLaughlin, a 2009 graduate of the team, was a two-time silver medalist at the Winter Olympics with Team USA, and more than a few men\u2019s players reached the AHL at a time when that wasn\u2019t commonplace in Atlantic Hockey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Colton Parayko skated for Alaska from 2012 to 2015 and was part of the St. Louis Blues’ Stanley Cup-winning team in 2019 (photo: Jim Rosvold).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet there was the announcement on May 26 that both teams were being dropped as part of \u201ca series of strategic initiatives intended to position the university to be among the most agile and professionally-focused schools in the nation.\u201d It made no sense and, to a large degree, still doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a roller coaster, for sure,\u201d athletic director Chris King said in a September, 2021 article by DK Pittsburgh Sports. \u201cI don\u2019t know of any Division I athletic director who ever wants to be part of discontinuing sports, and it\u2019s a tough, tough situation because you kind of feel like you\u2019re switched on, you\u2019re in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n

King wasn\u2019t available for comment for this post, but the article in DK Pittsburgh Sports noted that the announcement to end hockey came from an administrative level. His athletic department, it said, had its budget balanced during the pandemic, and RMU clearly wasn\u2019t facing the same dire situation as the other two universities.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t stop RMU from the same fate, though, and the Colonials entered the college hockey cycle of grieving when dismayed social media offered varying levels of anger and sadness.<\/p>\n

A GoFundMe, a common response to a program cut in the modern era, quickly formed, but the movement grew almost immediately into the Pittsburgh College Hockey Foundation. It formalized the effort and linked up with King and the athletics department, and within five months, nearly 500 season tickets were sold for programs that didn\u2019t have a formal future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout even having a team to sell tickets for, [nearly 300] of those are men\u2019s tickets,\u201d Derek Schooley, the men\u2019s hockey coach and director of operations for both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s programs said. \u201cYou throw those in with our donor club of 200 people and our player comps, and you\u2019re getting close to 80 percent capacity before we ever put individual game tickets on sale. That\u2019s outstanding. The university has made Hockey is the Goal one of its top fundraising priorities. Everybody\u2019s focused on doing the work to raise the money and keep visibility up, and I think you\u2019re going to see some events moving forward [that will help].<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing is that we show that there\u2019s a lot of support for Division I hockey at Robert Morris,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve raised approximately $1.4 million in gifts and pledges towards the return, but we still have a steep climb to reach our goal of $2.8 million. But with those gifts and pledges, we\u2019re taking the necessary steps to return to the ice and hit that target.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the latest attempt by fans, supporters and the college hockey community to save a program, and while each of the three teams got to this point with completely different avenues, they each reinforced how the community and the fans could at least force a university to analyze why hockey became unsustainable. In all three cases, the universities admitted that it wouldn\u2019t bring a sport back without some level of sustainability, and it was part of the larger conversation when St. Thomas reclassified to Division I and when Augustana broke ground on its arena on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

There are still questions facing the programs. UAH is technically suspended but won\u2019t return unless the situation is the right reboot for the athletics department, and both Alaska schools are currently navigating the murky independent waters. The Nanooks successfully compiled a competitive schedule with over a dozen home games, but eight of those games are against either RPI or Clarkson. Alaska Anchorage won\u2019t return until next year and will need to find a new head coach after losing its head coach just before the announcement of a return.<\/p>\n

RMU, meanwhile, re-hired Schooley, the only head coach in its men\u2019s program\u2019s history, as its continued leader and hired McLaughlin as its Special Assistant for Hockey Operations. Atlantic Hockey hasn\u2019t yet made a formal announcement and couldn\u2019t be reached for comment, but the widely-held, common sense response is that the Colonials should and will rejoin the league.<\/p>\n

Whatever winds up happening, though, the support at the grassroots level is an undeniable, hallmark staple of college hockey. No program wants to rely on it for survival, but it\u2019s showing itself why fans hold the red button. WIthout them, these programs would just fall back into the ether, but instead, they are in the conversation, just like they always were and, in a sense, always will be.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther sports compete, for the most part, in their multi-sport conference,\u201d Snee said, \u201cand because of that, organizations like College Hockey, Inc. don\u2019t exist for those sports. They don\u2019t get what I would call an advocacy organization or an advocacy lobbyist organization, and they don\u2019t exist for other, \u2018regular\u2019 sports. Football and basketball don\u2019t need it, but every other sport would benefit from organizations like College Hockey, Inc. that just make sure that our sport is growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had tremendous support,\u201d said Schooley. \u201cEverybody\u2019s been great, especially Mike Snee [from College Hockey, Inc.] down to every individual coach and junior coach and even at higher levels in the NHL. We\u2019ve had tremendous support in fundraisers that we\u2019re doing to move forward. Everybody is banding together just like they were with Huntsville and Anchorage to try and save college hockey programs. We can\u2019t afford to lose programs, and I\u2019m thankful for the support.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCollege hockey has always been a sports-specific conference situation,\u201d Snee added. \u201cIt has its benefits and negatives, but the benefits build community amongst the schools. One thing that College Hockey Inc. has been able to do is say if [teams] are part of a plan. We can tie every school in college hockey together, whether it\u2019s Division III, Division II, or Division I, if a program has a huge promotion budget or whether they have no promotion budget. Internally, we call ourselves a PR department for college hockey, so when there is something like what happened with those schools. We\u2019re not tied to any one conference, so if you play college hockey, we consider you part of what we can oversee and promote.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2020-21 season was another typical year for the Robert Morris hockey program. The Colonials won Atlantic Hockey\u2019s Western Pod regular-season championship and were within a game of advancing to their seventh straight playoff semifinal appearance. It took an unorthodox playoff format and a double-overtime second game to stop the team, but RMU clearly ranked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":117697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[812,1671],"coauthors":[804],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCollege hockey community rising to occasion to save teams, but should such a responsibility fall on fans? - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 2020-21 season was another typical year for the Robert Morris hockey program. 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