Denise Ilitch was bored with being informed no.
For the previous couple of years, she had been championing the thought of varsity girls’s hockey to the College of Michigan administration. As a result of whereas the varsity is called a males’s hockey powerhouse — with 9 nationwide championships, the second most all-time — Michigan has by no means iced a girls’s Division I hockey crew.
Ilitch — a regent on the College and the daughter of Marian and the late Mike Ilitch, who purchased the Detroit Purple Wings in 1982 — had been informed repeatedly that it couldn’t be accomplished. The explanation? It was too costly, although Ilitch had by no means been given any particular figures to again up the rejection.
“I had not heard a adequate cause on why we couldn’t have girls’s hockey DI at Michigan,” Ilitch informed The Athletic.
So, throughout the March regents assembly, Ilitch went public along with her pitch: It’s time for the College of Michigan to launch a varsity girls’s hockey program.
The ladies’s membership crew shall be in its thirtieth yr when the puck drops for the 2024-25 season on Thursday. And the urge for food for girls’s hockey within the State was obvious when a Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League recreation at Little Caesars Enviornment in Detroit drew a report crowd for a recreation again in March.
“A part of our mission assertion on the College of Michigan says ‘to serve the individuals of Michigan.’ And proper now, the individuals of Michigan should not being served. There’s a demand for girls’s hockey at (Michigan),” Ilitch stated throughout the assembly. “Ladies belong on the identical ice as males. The College of Michigan should present that on our ice, we assist varsity girls’s hockey. That’s management. Hockey is for everybody, and we’re ‘HockeyTown.‘”
Michigan president Santa Ono stated he would look into launching a feasibility research with athletic director Warde Manuel.
The athletic division launched the research in Could; it’s anticipated to be accomplished someday within the fall.
The research is a major step towards a possible future for elite girls’s hockey at one of many largest faculties in school athletics. It’s the primary actual have a look at including the game in a long time. This time, although, the push for girls’s hockey comes at a historic second for the game, with a brand new skilled league and extra eyes on the sport than ever earlier than.
“It nearly appears like we’ve acquired this excellent storm,” stated Jenna Trubiano, the membership crew’s head coach. “I personally would have wished it occurred a few years in the past. We will’t change the previous however you possibly can concentrate on the long run.”
There’s cause to consider a girls’s DI program would make sense at Michigan.
However the questions stay: Why has it by no means labored earlier than? And might they make it occur now?
It’s been 26 years since girls’s hockey was significantly thought-about for varsity appointment at Michigan.
The membership crew was based in 1994 by a bunch of ladies who performed hockey within the space — totally on males’s groups or in open grownup leagues — and needed to see extra alternatives solely for girls. By the 1997-98 season, Michigan was seeking to promote two groups to varsity standing and ladies’s hockey — which was about to debut on the 1998 Nagano Olympics — gave the impression to be excessive on the shortlist.
In accordance with archived board minutes, enterprise plans for the addition of ladies’s hockey and males’s soccer started improvement in March 1998. That course of was not in contrast to the present feasibility research: The athletic division dug into the way it might add girls’s hockey as a varsity sport, and the way a lot it will value.
Plans have been submitted in September 1998, in response to the data, however solely two months later the division moved on from hockey. Ultimately, the varsity opted to raise males’s soccer and ladies’s water polo.
“It was only a cash determination,” stated Sue McDowell, one of many co-founders of the ladies’s membership hockey crew who turned a longtime assistant coach.
Water polo, McDowell was informed, would value considerably lower than hockey. And the ladies’s crew might share a facility, the Canham Natatorium, with the boys. Soccer already had fields in place. For hockey, although, Yost Ice Enviornment — with just one ice sheet and one up-to-standard locker room — isn’t simply shared.
“That was just about the nail within the coffin,” McDowell stated. “Everytime you introduced it up, it was ‘that is too costly,’ and ‘there’s no approach we are able to do it.’”
Whereas Michigan handed on girls’s hockey, different varsity applications began popping up, together with at Huge Ten rival faculties Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio State. Because the NCAA sanctioned girls’s hockey in 2000-01, Minnesota (6) and Wisconsin (7) have received probably the most championships. Ohio State — Michigan’s largest rival — has received two championships within the final three years, which could really be the largest argument in favor of ladies’s hockey at Michigan in most circles.
“If Ohio State wins nationwide championships, they need to should run by means of Michigan,” stated Michigan regent Jordan Acker, who supported Ilitch’s argument in favor of a varsity crew on the March assembly. “It completely performs a job (within the need for a crew), there’s no query about it.”
Feminine hockey registration has additionally grown within the state of Michigan within the a long time since that late ’90s determination. Final season, Michigan ranked fourth behind main hockey hotbed states Minnesota, Massachusetts and New York in feminine registration, per USA Hockey. And but, save for the Wayne State program, which folded in Could 2011, there have been no DI girls’s hockey applications within the state of Michigan. In distinction, there are seven males’s applications that can play in 2024-25.
This has resulted in homegrown expertise from profitable youth applications akin to Little Caesars or HoneyBaked having to depart Michigan to pursue elite school hockey alternatives. 4 gamers from Michigan — Kirsten Simms, Megan Keller, Abby Roque and Taylor Girard — appeared on Crew USA rosters final season. All 4 left the state for faculty hockey; Simms — who grew up in Plymouth, Mich., and is a junior at Wisconsin — led all NCAA gamers in scoring final season.
For McDowell, it’s simple to really feel like Michigan missed a essential window in 1997-98. “It’s at all times been a sore spot,” she stated.
When the feasibility research is full it would present determination makers with a complete overview of what it would really value to run a program. This consists of the whole lot from the price of scholarships, salaries, and journey budgets, to Title IX implications, and an analysis of potential venues, which might imply updating an present facility or constructing a completely new one.
Michigan has employed Collegiate Sports activities Associates, an government search and consulting agency, to guide the research. School Hockey Inc. can be concerned. A spokesperson from the Michigan athletic division confirmed that the research is ongoing, however didn’t have something to share publicly right now.
A feasibility research can present a transparent path towards organising a crew. That was the case for the College of Delaware when the varsity introduced at a press convention final yr that it will add girls’s hockey as a varsity sport for the 2025-26 season. The athletic division had already dedicated to maneuver to the Soccer Bowl Subdivision — the best degree of school soccer within the nation — and was dedicated to including a girls’s sport to stay Title IX compliant.
“As we thought-about the entire NCAA-sponsored sports activities, girls’s ice hockey did take advantage of sense on the highest degree,” stated Chrissi Rawak, Delaware’s athletic director.
Delaware’s research laid out the funds and located that Fred Rust Ice Enviornment, the place the crew will play — certainly one of two rinks on campus — solely wanted small-scale renovations, which made girls’s hockey extra possible financially.
Usually, the shortage of an present facility is the largest hurdle in the case of including DI hockey. For Michigan, Yost Ice Enviornment goes to play a central function within the research and the way forward for a girls’s varsity program. It was in-built 1923 as a subject home and was changed into a hockey facility in 1973. It’s an iconic venue in school hockey, however it has just one sheet of ice and one locker room — the boys’s dwelling locker room — that may be thought-about high quality sufficient.
The varsity males’s hockey crew can be the one full-time tenant at Yost. The ladies’s and males’s membership groups don’t have locker room area within the enviornment, and normally observe throughout off hours as a result of the boys’s crew has precedence. The ladies’s membership crew is required to pay to play at Yost, at a price of between $30,000- $40,000 — it would value gamers $2,500 in dues to play hockey at Michigan this season — although President Ono has reimbursed the crew for many of its rink invoice the previous couple of years.
If a second crew have been to maneuver into Yost on a full-time foundation, renovations would seemingly be required, both so as to add one other ice sheet or extra locker rooms. However an growth is unlikely given how outdated the sector is and the footprint it already has on campus — it backs up onto the baseball facility and sits between the soccer coaching facility and an instructional constructing.
There are rinks in Ann Arbor — such because the Ann Arbor Ice Dice — that would probably be used as observe services to make sharing Yost solely mandatory for video games. The research will look at the entire doable facility choices, together with different websites on campus that could possibly be renovated to accommodate hockey.
Donors will seemingly play an vital function in girls’s hockey at Michigan, particularly if a brand new constructing is required.
In 2011, Michigan promoted males’s and ladies’s lacrosse groups to varsity; two years later the athletic division obtained a $100 million donation from Stephen M. Ross, the proprietor of the Miami Dolphins, which helped fund the brand new athletic campus that features a lacrosse stadium. In hockey, Penn State males’s and ladies’s hockey debuted in 2012-13 after a $102 million donation from Terry and Kim Pegula, the homeowners of the Buffalo Payments and NHL Sabres, which funded the development of the Pegula Ice Enviornment.
“I believe that there’s cautious enthusiasm for this,” Ilitch stated. “I’ve obtained quite a few calls from those that wish to assist, that wish to become involved, that wish to donate. Typically you need to name donors. Donors don’t name you.”
One other main consideration for Michigan shall be the place the crew performs. Delaware is becoming a member of Atlantic Hockey America, which already consists of Lindenwood, Mercyhurst, Penn State, Rochester Institute of Know-how, Robert Morris College, and Syracuse.
For Michigan, the almost certainly choices are the AHA and the Western Collegiate Hockey Affiliation. The Huge Ten doesn’t presently sponsor girls’s hockey prefer it does for males’s hockey, however it’s truthful to marvel if that may change if Michigan entered the image.
The WCHA makes loads of sense with three Huge Ten groups (Wisconsin, Ohio State and Minnesota) and would enable Michigan to capitalize on preexisting rivalries. However, the convention’s footprint stretches over 900 miles between Bemidji, Minn., and Columbus, Ohio, which might affect journey prices. Becoming a member of the AHA would imply extra drivable journeys, and would seemingly be simpler to compete in — that’s in the end what made it a “excellent league” for Delaware, Rawak stated.
AHA commissioner Michelle Morgan stated she’s had some “very preliminary” conversations with Michigan about league dues and journey. When requested if Michigan can be a match for the WCHA, commissioner Michelle McAteer stated, “Like everybody in girls’s hockey, the momentum, curiosity and potential round Michigan elevating to DI standing could be very thrilling. We might work with School Hockey Inc., institutional representatives and the opposite DI hockey conferences to assist make that occur.”
The present push for girls’s hockey at Michigan seems to have all the correct items assembled: the assist of the regents — together with the ability and affect of Denise Ilitch — and President Ono, potential donors, and the need to beat Ohio State in each sporting enviornment.
Two years in the past, these elements may need led to a straightforward sure. However now?
“It could be the worst time so as to add a varsity sport to an athletic program,” stated Greg Dooley, a professor at Michigan who teaches programs concerning the historical past of school athletics.
School athletics are on the cusp of unprecedented change. The explosion in NIL compensation for athletes has already modified the panorama. And now — after the NCAA and the nation’s 5 largest conferences have agreed to pay practically $2.8 billion to settle a number of antitrust claims — the stage is ready for thousands and thousands of {dollars} to go on to pupil athletes.
A groundbreaking revenue-sharing mannequin outlined within the March settlement proposal would have faculties every present as much as $21 million yearly to pupil athletes. That has already led to finances cuts throughout the NCAA, with tougher selections — significantly in the case of Olympic or “non-revenue sports activities” — positive to return.
“Most athletic departments proper now are going to be making selections about which applications to assist and presumably reduce,” Dooley stated. “Who’s going so as to add a hockey program proper now?”
In June, the Michigan athletic division projected complete working revenues for 2024-25 to be $255.7 million — a $25 million enhance from the 2024 fiscal yr — with projected working bills of $253.4 million. Michigan athletics financially advantages from its soccer program — the defending nationwide champions — and the Huge Ten’s $8 billion media rights deal that started final season. However even Michigan, with its massive revenues, goes to face main challenges within the new panorama of school athletics.
GO DEEPER
Huge Ten indicators TV rights offers value over $8 billion
“It has to make sense financially for the athletic division to assist all of the groups on this new world, which we’re not fairly clear on but,” Dooley stated. “In case you’re operating a enterprise, you in all probability wait to make any important adjustments till you perceive the actual affect.”
When Delaware determined to maneuver ahead with girls’s hockey, the athletic division had no sense of what was to return. Rawak stated the looming adjustments wouldn’t have altered their determination, given the elevated publicity and nationwide visibility that comes with a transfer to FBS soccer. However she did admit this can be a rather more difficult time so as to add important bills to an athletic division.
And whereas Dooley has many reservations concerning the adjustments to return, if there’s a college that may pull this off right now in collegiate athletics, it’s Michigan.
“I believe it’s the correct factor to do on the proper time,” he stated. “I believe individuals on this city will assist it, and albeit most individuals wished they’d this crew 20 years in the past.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Pictures of Denise Ilitch, Michigan hockey and Yost Ice Enviornment: AP; Scott W. Grau / Icon Sportswire through Getty Pictures)