The following is redistributed with permission from the Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY, 12/22/96. -- Sports Sunday, 22-Dec-96 11:30:00 EST Tough Sell Strict financial aid policy makes recruiting Div. I hockey players difficult for Union "The school is academic oriented . . . I don't think they're ever going to get to a point where they want to start awarding athletic scholarships." Kevin Sneddon Union assistant coach By KEN SCHOTT Gazette Sportswriter ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCHENECTADY - Maintaining its principles and a competitive Division I hockey program at the same time is a constant struggle for Union College. Union grants aid to all student-athletes - including hockey players - on the basis of need. And that puts it at a huge disadvantage when competing for recruits with other members of the diverse Eastern College Athletic Conference Division I league. Three of the ECAC's 12 teams - Clarkson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Vermont - offer outright hockey scholarships. St. Lawrence will award its first hockey scholarships next year. Six other schools are Ivy League institutions that don't offer athletic scholarships. Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton and Yale, though, are able to attract top-notch players, thanks to their reputations as excellent academic institutions with established hockey programs. Colgate, like the Ivy League schools, has a solid track record in academics and hockey and does not give athletic scholarships. It does, however, offer preferential aid, which the student-athlete is not obliged to pay back or work off through a work-study program. "Without scholarships, and without the big Ivy League name, it's a tough draw," Union senior defenseman Andrew Will said. "The thing you've got to rely on is the quality of the program and the name you can build for the school. The education you get at the school is one of its strong points." Since becoming a Division I program in 1991, Union has had mixed results. The Dutchmen missed the playoffs in their first two seasons. They qualified for the postseason the next two years, finishing sixth in 1993-94 and 10th in 1994-95. Last season, Union was eliminated from the playoff race on the next-to-last night of the regular season. In five seasons, Union has compiled a 37-87-13 league record and has defeated every team in the ECAC at least once. Union athletic director Dick Sakala is happy with the direction the program is going, especially its association with the Ivy League teams. "People like to have that kind of company," Sakala said. "For Union, that's company that everybody feels positive about." Careful steps Even though the hockey program is Division I, all other sports at Union remain in Division III. The college has been diligent in making sure that all sports are treated equally. "There was a very, very strong feeling that, philosophically, we did not want to separate our hockey student-athletes from the rest of our student-athletes," Sakala said. "There was a lot of discussion and thought that went into that. I don't see that changing at all. We didn't want hockey players being treated differently than other student-athletes on campus. "If you start to give the grant-in-aids at an institution like Union, you are clearly separating them, philosophically." Consequently, Union must go after players who have some talent and a good academic background. "We're not going to recruit the same player Michigan does," said Kevin Sneddon, who is in his fourth year as Union's assistant coach and lead recruiter. "We're not going to go head-to-head with them if they're offering a full scholarship. If it's a walk-on situation, maybe we do have a chance. But there are players out there. You have to realize realistically who we can and can't look at it." Although Union is following the Ivy League tradition of not giving athletic scholarships, there is a difference in the way the schools provide financial aid. "The problem we have with the Ivys is that they have different tier packages," Sakala said. "They stay within need but, for example, Harvard might have an `A-B-C' package where a kid who, maybe a hockey player, somehow may be bumped into an `A' package category. It's all on need, but within that need basis, the `A' package might have a minimum job-loan combination. At Union College, the job-loan package is the same for everyone." Other selling points Although Union dispenses neither scholarships nor preferential aid, it has other enticements for hockey prospects. One is its superb academic reputation. The other is the chance to play right away. "One selling point is you are new, you are upcoming, and there are opportunities for players to come in and establish themselves perhaps more immediately than if they were to go to a program that was more prestigious," said Union head coach Stan Moore. Will was one of 15 freshman players recruited for the 1993-94 squad. It was the Dutchmen's biggest Division I recruiting class as they continued to make the transition from Division III. Will, from Willowdale, Ontario, received overtures from Brown and Yale. But he decided on Union because he said it was the first school to show an interest in him. "It was obviously going to be an opportunity to play," said Will, who is the team's captain this season. "That was something that I easily wanted to do. I didn't want to sit around and not get a chance to play." Union will go through a similar process after this season. The Dutchmen will need to replace 14 players - the 13 seniors remaining from the 1993-94 recruiting class, plus right wing Boe Leslie, who left over the summer following his sophomore season to play professionally in Europe. The opportunity to play right away this season attracted freshman right wing Ryan Campbell of Orleans, Ontario. But what also got Campbell interested in Union was the school itself. "What my parents and I read in the Union brochure is that there are 11 students to one teacher," Campbell said. "That really attracted my parents to the school because at home, there's 1,000 students to one professor. The time a professor can put into working with you [at Union], you can't beat that." "There's a lot more to life after hockey. You have to look towards that." No scholarships It is doubtful that Union will ever offer hockey scholarships. Even if it wanted to, the college would have to petition the NCAA to get permission to do it because hockey is the only Division I sport at the Division III institution. Clarkson and RPI, where hockey is also the only Division I sport, can still give scholarships because those schools were exempted through a grandfather clause following an NCAA reclassification process in 1987. "The school is academic-oriented," Sneddon said. "They award students based on that. I don't think they're ever going to get to a point where they want to start awarding athletic scholarships." Will agreed. "The only Division I sport at a Division III school is a tough situation," Will said. "The way the school administration wants to go is to maintain the financial aid aspect. Education is always the thing that you stress. They don't want to get away from that." One ECAC coach said there are some advantages to being a non-scholarship school like Union. Clarkson coach Mark Morris, who was an assistant at Union in 1984-85, has been on both sides of the issue. He was an assistant at St. Lawrence from 1985-88, when the school wasn't giving scholarships. At Clarkson, he has the luxury of awarding scholarships. "At a scholarship school, you can't afford to make a mistake," Morris said. "Oftentimes, you're dealing with a kid who has a bit of an ego and a bit of a reputation as a specific kind of player. Sometimes at a financial aid school, you may just have to recruit numbers; you go after 10 kids to get five that are going to be contributors. During that time, you're going to come across some hard-working kids that have things to prove. They don't need their egos stroked." If Moore could change one aspect, he would like to see Union give preferential aid. "It might be an opportunity to explore," Moore said. "It would be nice [for it] to become a reconsideration. Probably, not so much from this office alone, there has to be a campus-wide intent and posture to feel that they're all in agreement that this is something we need to do to be competitive. "We're having a good year right now, but with the loss of 13 seniors and all that experience, the question has to be answered as to whether or not you want every fourth year to be a huge rebuilding year. If that's the posture of the school, then that's the way it has to be run." reply to Gazette Newspapers: [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jim Teresco '92, '93G - [log in to unmask] Lab Manager - Union College PASTA Lab, http://www.pasta.union.edu Visit the Union Hockey Pages at http://www.vu.union.edu/hockey HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.