At 21:19 4/5/95 -0600, Eric J. Lentz wrote:
 
>On a related topic, there are several posters who have indicated that their
>club teams have a pretty good following (people attend fairly well the
>games in their small rinks).  What seem to be the posibility of starting
>varsity teams at these schools.  I am particularly interested in the BigTen
>schools, as with a few more the conference could sponsor a hockey league
>and championship.  The BigTen added a championship in Women's Crew and a
>Women's Soccer tourney this year as the number of schools participating in
>those sports have recently grown.
>
>
Here at Penn State, there has been some talk about hockey becoming a
varsity program with no scholarships.  It would still be a big outlay of
cash by the university for travel, equipment, etc.  The booster club
pays for most of that now.  The school foots the bill for ice time, the
coach and that's about it; who knows if they're willing to take on the
additional expense.
 
There's also concern about taking a strong club program and
dropping it into the D-1 world, where it wouldn't be successful
for some time -- can you keep up the fan base when you aren't in
the running for anything and who would we be able to schedule
to come in and play us to pull in fans?
 
There aren't too many women's sports to offset adding hockey
-- we just added women's soccer this year and aren't at 60/40 yet,
so unless another men's sport gets dropped, I don't see changes
anytime soon.
 
Jen Bortz
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