Women’s ice hockey is frequently referred to as the fastest-growing sport in the nation. A year ago, the growth was evident in the sport’s newfound NCAA recognition. Now the growth can be seen in the emergence of a third major hockey conference and the announcement that Hockey East will now sponsor women’s hockey.

The ECAC announced earlier this year that it would be splitting into leagues, arbitrarily named the ECAC North (or ECAC 9) and the ECAC East (or ECAC 8). Harvard will be in the ECAC North along with the other five Ivy hockey schools (Penn and Columbia don’t have any hockey program), plus St. Lawrence, Colgate and Vermont.

The ECAC expanded from 13 to 17 teams with the addition of UConn, Colgate, Vermont and Quinnipiac. UConn had been a Division One Independent last year, Quinnipiac made the jump straight from the club level, while Colgate and Vermont both had been top Division Three schools.

“There was no solution other than to break up because you can’t have a league with 17 teams in it, particularly when you play in the Ivy League and you’re strapped to 29 games, so there had to be some flexibility somewhere,” said Harvard Coach Katey Stone. “And this was the best solution and it was sort of coming down the road anyway with Hockey East.”

The actual placement of the teams was hardly coincidental. The nine schools who had men’s teams in ECAC hockey where all placed in the ECAC 9, while the ECAC 8 included the five programs with men’s programs in Hockey East—New Hampshire, Northeastern, Providence, Maine and Boston College—plus whatever teams were left, namely Niagara, UConn and Quinnipiac.

During the offseason, Hockey East announced that it would sponsor women’s college hockey beginning no later than 2004-05. Coaches across college hockey were excited about the growth prospects. Stone said that it would not only encourage the Hockey East schools that don’t sponsor women’s college hockey—UMass-Amherst, UMass-Lowell, Merrimack and Boston University—to create programs, but also step up the support for programs like Boston College that haven’t received equitable funding.

“I think it’s going to raise the standard for the other teams in Hockey East that haven’t been doing enough for their programs,” Stone said.

If Hockey East’s potential influence becomes a reality, women’s college hockey could finally have a Beanpot with four strong teams. The women’s Beanpot has been dominated by Northeastern, and more recently Harvard, throughout its history.

Coaches from the Hockey East schools were optimistic about the prospects for their teams in the future based on the national competitiveness of the men’s league. Boston College was the national champion in men’s hockey last season.

“We’re excited about being with a group of teams that shares similar philosophies,” said Providence Coach Bob Deraney. “All I can say is that the success the men have had at the national level bodes well that what they’re doing works well in the hockey realm.”

Where’s Michigan?

With the ECAC’s longtime sponsorship of hockey, the creation of the women’s WCHA two years ago, and the recent Hockey East announcement, women’s college hockey now has three established leagues set for the future. Among the four longstanding men’s leagues, only the CCHA, which includes most of the Michigan schools, has not stepped up to sponsor women’s hockey. Ohio St., a member of the WCHA in women’s hockey, is the only CCHA school that has the sport.

In 1999, the University of Michigan decided to sponsor two new varsity sports with surplus revenues from football tickets. It had to choose between men’s soccer, women’s water polo, women’s lacrosse and women’s ice hockey. It went with soccer and water polo.

“I think Michigan blew that by taking water polo over women’s ice hockey,” said Northeastern Coach Joy Woog. “It would have opened up the whole Great Lakes region, but that set us back.”

Stone said that, from conversations9 with Michigan State men’s hockey coach Ron Mason, she knows that the Spartans would like to have a women’s hockey program, but it would be a logistical nightmare.

“It’s very easy to say, they ought to have it,” Stone said. “But that’s not necessarily the case all the time. There are things behind the scenes that sometimes make or break these decisions. You just sort of chip away at it. The hope is you give school’s like that every positive reason to start one instead of saying, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t do it.’”

Still Four Spots

Despite the fact that women’s college hockey has now expanded to 29 Division One teams and three leagues with at least eight teams (there is a fourth conference, the Great Lakes Women’s Hockey League with only three members), the number of women’s hockey tournament berths has remained static at four.

This means that just four of 29 (13.8 percent) of women’s hockey programs will reach the tournament. This is far below the average for NCAA Division One sports, which hovers around a target of about 20 percent. [See chart].

If the field were expanded to eight teams, the percentage would be well above the 20 percent rule of thumb at 27.6 percent. But a six-team tournament, with a participation rate of 20.7 percent, would be just right.

The number of teams in the national tournament has yet to change from 1998, when the first national tournament was held, there was no women’s WCHA, and women’s hockey was still listed as an emerging sport and not an official NCAA sport.

The four-team tournament produces a number of difficulties in terms of selection. With four teams, there is no room for automatic bids, so conference tournaments are no more relevant than regular season games.

It has also made for touchy issues in terms of selection decisions. Last year, Minnesota, the WCHA regular season champion and defending national champion, was left out of the Frozen Four in lieu of St. Lawrence who placed third in the ECAC regular season and tournament. The year before that, defending national champion Harvard was left out in favor of a Minnesota team it had beaten 7-3 during the regular season and a Dartmouth team that had lost five more games against a relatively weak schedule.

The selection decision is bound to be even more controversial this year, with only 13.8 percent of the schools making the field. It is very possible that one of the three major leagues might not have a tournament representative.

“There are a lot of teams out there who are going to be fighting for four spots,” Stone said. “And there are going to be a lot of good hockey clubs that don’t go. And that’s too bad because you want to showcase the sport.”

“I’m not sure it would be showcasing the best ability in the country if we were only able to have four teams,” Stone added. “If you’re trying to gain exposure for the sport you may want have a few more teams involved, so you’re getting people from different parts of the country.”

Soccer is the sport subject to the most recent tournament expansion this past year. The women’s field expanded from 48 to 64 teams, raising the percentage of teams in the tournament from 17.3 to 23.1. Softball, whose rate has fallen below 20 percent in recent years, is among those next in line for tournament expansion.

Women’s hockey tournament expansion appears to be coming in only a matter of time. But why it hasn’t happened yet is anybody’s guess.