Last evening (while attempting to figure out what uniforms RPI wore in
various years) I found a copy of the 1983-84 College Hockey Guide which
lists the Div-I, Div-II, and Div-III schools for that year.  There are
41 Div-I schools listed, consisting of 37 that are now Div-I (all
except the two Alaska schools, Merrimack, Union, Mass-Amherst, St.
Cloud, and Notre Dame, the latter in a hiatus from Div-I play) as well
as Kent State, Dayton, Northern Arizona, and US International.  Kent
and Dayton were actually playing lower division and club teams while N.
Arizona and USIU were attempting to upgrade their programs.
 
What interested me is that there are also 37 Div-II teams (and 42
Div-III).  The Div-II list includes Alaska-Anchorage, Alaska-Fairbanks,
Merrimack, St. Cloud, and Union that are now Div-I  The remaining
schools are AIC, Babson, Bemidji State, Bowdoin, Brockport State,
Buffalo State, Canisius, Colby, Connecticut, Cortland State, Elmira,
Framingham State, Geneseo State, Gustavus Adolphus, Hamilton, Hobart,
Holy Cross, Lake Forest, Mankato State, Massachusetts-Boston,
Middlebury, New England College, North Adams State, Norwich, Oswego
State, Plattsburgh State, Potsdam State, RIT, St. Alselm, Salem State,
Westfield State, and Williams.
 
This is a rather strange list.  Canisius, Connecticut, and Holy Cross
are now Div-I playing mostly Div-III schedules.  (Actually, wasn't
Connecticut actually a Div-I school all along?  Weren't they in the
Big-East in b-ball then? I don't know about the other two.)  Most of
the reminder are now Div-III although a few are still in Div-II and
some have probably given up playing hockey :-(.  I know that at one
point the Div-II championship was abolished and teams were given the
option of changing their Division status for Hockey.  However, I wonder
if all of these schools were really Div-II at the time.  For example, I
thought that Union was a Div-III school.  Any comments?
 
Ralph Baer
RPI '68, '70, '74