This is long but I hope some people will take the time to read it.
I spent about a half hour tonight talking to Northeastern women's hockey coach
Don MacLeod. MacLeod has resigned effective at the end of this season after
spending 11 years building up the program to the point where it is one of
the best in the world. It is about to be destroyed. I also talked to someone
from the athletic department tonight and got a good handle on both sides
of the issue.
The issue that has caused such a deep rift between MacLeod and the NU admini-
stration is the cutting of six scholarships from the women's hockey program.
NU has been hit very hard by budget cuts and so this is a timely issue for
H-L. The athletic department has a very low regard for women's hockey even
though it has annually done much better than any of NU's other sports programs.
Northeastern routinely travels to Canada and beats some of the better
Canadian schools like Toronto, thus qualifying it to call itself one of the
best programs in the world. MacLeod coached the US women's national team two
years ago and led it to a silver medal in the women's world championships.
Many of the players from NU will be playing for either the US or Canada in
the 1992 World Championships.
Apparently the athletic department put out a questionnaire to women on campus
and asked them what sports they would be interested in participating in.
Women's hockey ranked 19th on the list out of 20, ahead of synchronized
swimming. So, the dept. decided to take away the six scholarships and give
them to other women's sports. I tried to find out which sports got them,
to no avail - it is supposedly "classified". Now, first of all, using this
method to decide which sports should get scholarships is simply ludicrous.
How do we know how the respondents were chosen? How do we know they were not
women who would have never thought of playing hockey anyway?
Another reason given is that "no other school gives scholarships". UNH and PC
used to give them but took them away (reasons unknown). This hurts NU the
most because it is the most expensive school of the three. It also favors
the Ivies because, as MacLeod said, although they do not give athletic
scholarships, they can give financial aid from endowments and this aid which
does not come from the US government can go to any student. NU can only give
this aid to US citizens by law, leaving out Canadians, while Ivies can still
award aid to Canadians. MacLeod says he has several Canadians who will be
leaving after this year because their scholarships are being yanked, and they
can't afford to stay.
He does have one Canadian from Western Canada who, knowing of NU's reputation,
decided to pay her own way to the school so she could play there. But this
is extremely rare because not everyone has the money.
Women's hockey remains a poorly-regarded sport which also hurt it in the
dealings with NU. There is no NC$$ sanctioned national championship, thus
there is no money from the NC$$ to help support scholarships. But as these
programs continue to go under, chances of having NC$$ affiliation go down.
MacLeod noted that there are a number of teams in the ECAC DivI, while this
person from the dept. tried to tell me that only five schools have varsity
women's hockey. With the Ivies (5 or 6?), NU, UNH and PC, I don't know how
they got five out of that. MacLeod added that Colby, SLU and (RIT?) were
supposed to be moving their women's hockey teams to DivI status next season.
MacLeod and the dept. differ on how much support the dept. has given NU women's
hockey in the past. MacLeod said it doesn't get much money and pointed out
that his women are wearing jerseys that are six years old with holes while
the men got new jerseys this year. The dept. said that is because MacLeod
chooses to take the money and use it for something else. He also pointed
out that the women can't afford to bus to places like SLU and stay a night,
then play - they have to bus the same day, play and then bus back unless
they're playing another game.
The person from the dept. says that compared to other women's programs, NU
has had more money while NU's other teams get less money than comparable
schools give their teams. So it was decided to "bring them in line". I
can't verify this.
Anyway, MacLeod has not totally resigned himself to having to leave; he
still hopes something can be done although the AD has already told him it
won't happen. He remains optimistic as always. Parents of the women have
collected hundreds of signatures on a petition and indeed, the women themselves
worked hard for the cause until MacLeod asked them to stop because it was
interfering with their studying and their playing, to leave it to others.
NU president Dr John Curry (a quite POPULAR guy) was so incensed with MacLeod
and his attempts to change the decision, that he ordered that MacLeod be gone
the day after the last women's game. MacLeod didn't think that was right,
that he wanted to at least organize things and finish up any paperwork in
preparation for his successor...NU AD Irwin Cohen has apparently agreed to
allow this.
BTW, although his salary is not an issue, it should be noted that MacLeod
gets paid only $9,000 a year part-time to coach what might be the top women's
program in the world (or at least one of them). He works tremendous overtime
to help his kids out. He said when his team plays teams like UNH and PC,
he knows many of the players on the other side from having recruited them -
but they went elsewhere because he couldn't help them financially. And the
other teams usually have many more players than his own sparse team. Yet
they *still* win.
Similar to some of the talk here about Ferris, MacLeod noted that because his
team annually travels to Canada and performs well, Northeastern as a school
has become known well in Canada. Another good example of how programs can
generate name recognition.
BTW, he had excellent things to say about men's coach Ben Smith. Smith
has allowed MacLeod to use the video and conference room (which the school
built for the men's team) for his players, and Smith has been there to listen
to MacLeod in this tough time while MacLeod has helped Smith get acclimated
to his new environment.
This is kind of haphazard as I tried to remember the details and I'm sure I'll
think of more after I send this. General opinion seems to be that after
MacLeod leaves, the NU women's team, which won several unofficial national
titles under MacLeod, will wind down and cease to exist before long. This
makes me very sad. I've always liked MacLeod and he has almost been the Bob
Johnson of women's hockey in the US, but as this sport tries to evolve, it is
being shot down. I know NU is having money problems like many other schools,
but even in the past the school didn't help their best program a bit while
they were throwing money at an awful football program (which does actually
seem to be on an upswing). Politics and money seem to have doomed this proud
team to being a thing of the past. It is sad. I hope for the best for
MacLeod and his team, but I'm not optimistic.
---
Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] mikem@{beanpot,bubba}.ma30.bull.com
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