There are seven NCAA Division I men's teams in Michigan, there are zero women's teams. It's a loss for the sport in the hockey hot bed state.
There are seven NCAA Division I men's teams in Michigan, there are zero women's teams. It's a loss for the sport in the hockey hot bed state.
Michigan is a college hockey state. For men.
While men’s hockey at the NCAA level features seven Michigan programs including Michigan, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Lake Superior State, Ferris State, Northern Michigan, and Michigan Tech, there are no women’s programs at the NCAA Division I level in the state.
In the landscape of hockey in America, it's a gaping hole. Michigan does have women’s college hockey at the ACHA and Division III levels at schools including Adrian College, Michigan, Michigan-Dearborn, Michigan State, and Lake Superior State.
The majority of Michigan's men's programs have been playing since 1922, and have since been among the NHL’s top prospect producers. More than 100 years later, women’s hockey remains absent from the NCAA’s top level in the state. It's an absence that has forced top women's hockey player out of state to continue their careers.
Two members of USA’s national team at the recent World Championship, Abby Roque (Sault Ste. Marie) and Megan Keller (Farmington Hills) both come from Michigan. In the PHF, Toronto Six captain Shiann Darkangelo (Brighton) and Metropolitan Riveters captain Madison Packer (Detroit), and 2022 PHF Newcomer of the Year Taylor Girard (Macomb) are all Michiganders.
"Division one hockey in Michigan would be astronomical for both the growth of the game at the college level and at the grassroots level," said Packer "Look at the success of programs like Wisconsin and Ohio State, and imagine the programs that the University of Michigan and Michigan State would be able to put together."
Packer won two gold medals with USA's U-18 national teams scoring 20 points in 10 games before moving to the University of Wisconsin where she helped the Badgers win an NCAA national title.
"I would change nothing about my experience or my time in Madison as a Badger; however, I have to believe if the University of Michigan had a women's hockey team during my time of recruitment, I would've strongly considered playing for an incredible university so close to home. There are so many incredibly talented players at the youth, collegiate, national team and professional levels coming out of Michigan. It seems like a real swing and a miss not to provide these athletes the same opportunity afforded their male counterparts to play in their own backyards."
Even as you cross into Ohio and Indiana, Notre Dame and Bowling Green, who are less than an hour from the Michigan border, only have men’s programs. For a state with a wealth of women’s hockey talent, multiple programs could be created and thrive on local talent alone.
It's been a topic of debate for years. Recently, University of Michigan President Santa Ono discussed the topic with The Michigan Daily Thursday.
"I have attended several women’s ice hockey games, and they’ve done fantastically well. Their coaches and the players are fantastic — I have gotten to know some of them, and I try to cheer them on between different periods. It’s so wonderful. I’ve seen a growing fan presence at their games. I’ve tried to support not only the women’s ice hockey team, but also other club sports by absorbing some of the costs that are difficult for them to afford on their own," Ono said.
Those costs include having to rent campus facilities such as the historic Yost Arena, and players absorbing their own ice time bills. To open the 2022-2023 season the Michigan Wolverines ACHA team fundraised over $30,000 to cover their ice costs last season. Ono acknowledged the lack of institutional support for those costs, but also passed the responsibility of supporting women's athletes at the school, stating it shouldn't be the University president to decide what is considered a varsity sport.
"In terms of what are considered varsity sports, it really shouldn’t be the president of the University’s decision. We have an outstanding athletic director and coaches, and making the decision on a team becoming a varsity sport is really in their purview. These are complicated decisions because Yost is considered to be a temple to ice hockey, but it’s not configured for both men’s and women’s teams. It would require expensive renovations to Yost, or the creation of yet another ice arena, which has been discussed over the years but has a tremendous price tag to it. It’s not a trivial decision," Ono told The Michigan Daily Thursday.
"In addition to how we would support such a team, because they would travel longer distances, there would have to be a conversation with a conference as well as the NCAA. All that takes time. I know there’s tremendous support for making the women’s ice hockey team a varsity sport and I welcome that. Ultimately, if the decision is made by the athletic director and the Regents of the University to move forward, then I think that there’ll be plenty of people that will want to support the team, but it will be a process."
According to this year's captain of the Wolverines' women's team, Miki Rubin, the disappointment surrounding the lack of varsity recognition for Michigan hockey products is palpable.
“It’s just disheartening because a lot of people that live in Michigan that grow up dreaming of coming to the University of Michigan are not able to because they can’t pursue their dream of playing hockey," said Rubin, in a 2022 article on the subject in The Michigan Daily.
The team has sought varsity status many times since it was founded in 1994, including in 1996-1997 when the school chose to promote women's water polo to varsity status over hockey.
The state of Michigan hasn't always been without a women's varsity program at the NCAA Division I level. Wayne State University fielded a team for 12 seasons in the College Hockey America division from 1999 until 2011. When that program was cut however, the state, considered one of the best hockey state's in America, became a men's only domain at the NCAA Division I level.
As for women's hockey talent in the state, there is an abundance. The aforementioned pros have already missed their time playing in front of Michigan fans, and it's a fate current and future NCAA stars are exoperiencing as well. 2023 USA U-18 national team members Anneleis Bergmann (Detroit) who will play for Colgate next year and Cassie Hall (South Lyon) who is headed to Wisconsin will be the next to league the state. NCAA All-Rookie team member and former USA U-18 member Kirsten Simms (Plymouth) just finished a spectacular season at Wisconsin, former USA U-18 and Colgate rookie Elyssa Biederman was named to the ECAC Hockey All-Rookie Team, while Yale’s Elle Hartje (Detroit) was named a Second Team All-American and Ivy League Player of the Year. It’s just a small sampling of the talent the state produces.
At the minor levels, programs including Little Caesars, Belle Tire, and Honeybaked are regularly producing NCAA talent.
While Title IX solved many issues related to discrimination and gender inequity in NCAA sport, men running programs across the United States still hold the power to decide what sports women can play at the varsity level. Perhaps nowhere is that issue more evident than in the ongoing absence of NCAA Division I hockey in Michigan.