OCT 24, 2024 | SPORTS | By Ruby Arlowe (Guest Writer)
Colorado College stands out among other top Division I men’s hockey programs; however, there is no Division I women’s hockey program or NCAA-sanctioned team.
The school boasts a unique history; it had an outstanding 2023-2024 season and currently sits at No. 9 in the United States Collegiate Hockey Organization (USCHO) polls, and it’s one of a few without a matching NCAA DI women’s ice hockey team.
“I would be excited to see CC add women’s hockey,” said Kris Mayotte, men’s hockey head coach. “There are simply more DI caliber hockey players, men and women, than there are DI roster spots available.”
A DI men’s hockey program at a school without a female counterpart is not unusual. But it is unusual for a top 50 school. There are only four institutions in this category: the U.S. Air Force Academy, the University of Michigan, the University of Notre Dame and Colorado College.
Last season, the Colorado College Tigers made a mark in collegiate hockey with sustained outstanding effort. They beat the University of North Dakota, the top-ranked college hockey team, on Dec. 8, 2023, and then again, the following three times they met in an unprecedented Tiger sweep. The team, 21-13-3 at the end of the season, won the most games since 2011 and reached the USCHO top ten for the first time since 2012.
Ivy Leagues with DI men’s and women’s hockey programs include Brown University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University. Other non-Ivy League “top 50” schools with men’s and women’s programs include Boston College, Boston University, Colgate University, College of the Holy Cross, Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin.
Referred to by TopTier Admissions as a “hidden Ivy,” Colorado College was consistently ranked in the top 50 liberal arts colleges before withdrawing from the U.S. News Best Colleges in 2023. It resembles several Ivy League schools in its top-tier academics, competitive admission rates and proud hockey tradition.
Passed by Congress in 1972, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding. Within collegiate athletics, Title IX requires colleges to match the number of DI programs between men and women, effectively requiring schools with top men’s programs to have an equal number of women’s programs. Today, CC has two DI programs, women’s soccer and men’s ice hockey, and seven DIII men’s and seven DIII women’s teams.
Notre Dame didn’t admit women until 1972, followed by the U.S. Air Force Academy four years later, but CC has admitted women since its founding 100 years earlier in 1874. After Title IX, CC had to either downgrade its men’s hockey program to a lower division or upgrade a women’s sport. Women’s soccer became the matching counterpart, a program already succeeding in its previous rankings.
Men’s hockey began at CC in 1938, transitioned to NCAA D1 a year later and sponsored the first-ever NCAA hockey championship in 1948 at the Broadmoor World Arena.
After joining the DI ranks, women’s soccer became a powerhouse in the 1980s and 1990s, making several NCAA tournament runs.
“The CC Women’s Soccer program has a great history and tradition here and [is] able to play and drive to local/regional Division I competition as members of the Mountain West Conference, who are based in Colorado Springs,” said Lesley Irvine, athletic director.
Proximity to opponents matters. Women’s soccer is relatively close to its division rivals, including the University of Denver and City of Champions Cup opponent Air Force, and a women’s hockey program would lack close opponents. The lack of presence of other women’s hockey programs in Colorado has held back a potential CC team.
“The regional growth of Division I women’s hockey would help many institutions as we consider program sponsorship,” Irvine said.
Colorado College is not entirely without women’s hockey. A club team plays against local teams in Colorado, primarily consisting of women’s “beer leagues” and recreational adult leagues, according to Bryn Aprill ‘23, previous team captain.
Ice time is a challenge. Two years ago, the women’s club team started with four-time slots a week at Ed Robson arena, but they’re now down to two slots per week, which they “really had to fight for,” Aprill said.
It’s unclear whether building a DI women’s program at CC would require new facilities and revamping of current facilities.
“The easiest space to share is the weight room,” Mayotte said. “There are some other spaces that could potentially be shared, but due to the current layout, it would take some time to figure out.”
Claudia Asano Barcomb, former head women’s hockey coach at Union College and national champion as a player at Harvard, said that in all the programs she’s been in, men and women alternated ice times equitably (early and late). Some schools don’t alternate times, so men’s practices occur in the morning, women’s in the afternoon, or vice versa.
“While I was at Harvard and at Union, the classes were between, you know, [8:00 a.m.] and [3:00 p.m.], and you never could get on the ice before that,” Barcomb said.
Irvine said adding women’s D1 hockey at CC “comes up once in a while” to ESPN’s Ryan Clark last year, especially with the Ed Robson Arena opening in Oct. 2021, allowing hockey games to be played on campus.
“It is not as simple as institutions deciding they will add [a women’s hockey program] because they have a male equivalent program,” Irvine told Clark. “You go back to the history here; it makes sense why we have those two sports. The other piece for us is we are on a small campus with 2,100 students and a 12% admission rate.”
However, CC’s selective admissions might be part of why the time is right to develop a women’s D1 hockey program. With a 29.1 % decrease in admission rates from 2012 to 2023, CC is now indisputably a highly selective school. Almost every CC peer with a D1 men’s program also has a women’s D1 team, regardless of the size of the school.
“Ice hockey and women’s athletics both continue to grow at an impressive rate that would allow expansion to make sense,” Mayotte said. “College hockey is very important to me, and I believe in its growth.”
Mayotte isn’t alone in supporting the expansion of collegiate hockey at CC.
“I mean, I would love [a women’s DI hockey program],” Aprill said. “I think it would make a lot of sense. Like, you’ve got the facilities for it, and it’s really only being used by one team. So I think, you know, it would make a lot of sense to utilize that.”
Change the photo, please. The chosen graphic robs the story of any chance of being taken seriously. For this topic, a photo would be far more effective than this illisustration. Thank you, an avid reader of your work.