I must agree with Mike on this one, at least to a point. Certainly, major conference membership has relieved both UAF and UAA of their past scheduling problems, which required the Alaska schools to offer additional "enticements" to attract Lower 48 opponents. (As if an all-day plane ride and Alaska winter weather wasn't enough...) In fact, with both schools picking up a major portion of travel expenses and making other accomodations (3-game series to minimize absences from class, etc.) there seems to be far less need to exempt conference games played in Alaska from the 34-game limit. However, I still think that non-conference games (hey, let's don't kill those tourney plans yet) should remain exempt from the cap. Like Mike, I am very disppointed that UAF (and UAA) will not have the latitude to schedule teams like Maine, Harvard, Merrimack, Lowell and the long list of other fine Eastern teams which have made the trip to Alaska in past years. The fans love it and (I hope) the teams enjoyed the chance to visit Alaska, many for the first time. The logical means to continue this fine tradition is using a tournament format. In the past, both UAF and UAA have hosted some excellent tournaments, as both schools have great facilities and fan support. Barring that, I would personally rather see fewer conference games and more non-conference (read that Eastern) games. After all, why must conference teams play each other 4 times a season? Football and basketball don't do it that way. Finally, as for other Alaska team sports, there are no similar exemptions to my knowledge. Mainly this is due to the fact that we only support small team sports (basketball, x-c skiing/running, rifle, volleyball, etc.) at the Div. II level. There are well established "western" leagues for these sports (sorry, Washington and Oregon are western states, not Minnesota and Wisconsin...) and the teams are much smaller and have less gear to transport, resulting in less cost to visiting schools. I'd be happy to give any additional unsanctioned insight into this subject, as I am very concerned with the impact of conference games on Div. I hockey in Alaska. Don't misunderstand, I think everyone here is 100% thrilled with conference membership. Let's just not sever our historic ties with our Eastern friends completely. Mark Sonnier UAF '90, '96 (?)