Imagine for a moment a tense, late-season CCHA game between Toledo and Bowling Green at the Huntington Center.
Pipe dream? Maybe.
But as hockey, already immensely popular in Toledo with nightly sellouts for the Walleye, continues on an upward trajectory, it’s fair to wonder if the University of Toledo should make it the school’s 17th varsity sport.
“The topic has been brought up, of course,” said UT deputy athletic director Dave Nottke. “But we’ve never got to the point where it was serious. The feasibility wasn’t something we were going to consider at the time.”
What many people might not realize is that the Rockets already have a club team that dates to 1964.
UT, which won the Division II American Collegiate Hockey Association national championship in 1992, has competed at the highest level of the ACHA since 2018-19. The ACHA is the national governing body for non-varsity college hockey.
Don’t confuse Toledo’s club hockey team with intramural sports. UT hockey is about as close to a varsity team as possible without the official designation.
They practice. They watch film. They scout future opponents. They have their own locker room at Team Toledo Ice House. They travel in chartered coach buses and stay in hotels for road games. They eat team meals. The general manager and coaches recruit players. The university provides medical trainers.
“We try to mimic what an NCAA program would do,” GM Greg Urig said. “We don’t quite have that budget or the support necessarily, but we try to operate as closely as we can to what they would do.”
Urig, a 2010 UT graduate, is a mechanical engineer in northeast Ohio.
The biggest difference between UT’s 16 varsity sports and the club hockey team is that hockey players pay to participate. The $2,700 fee covers ice time, travel costs, officials, and league fees. Coaches get a small stipend.
“It’s completely worth it,” said junior captain Garrett Meyer, “and I think all 25 other guys on the team would agree.”
Vince Michelizzi falls into that category. The Ontario native calls enrolling at UT and suiting up for the club hockey program the “best decision” he’s made in a “very long time, if not my whole life.”
He had three options: try out for a semi-pro team in the Federal Hockey League, get a job, or play club hockey in the United States. Michelizzi played junior hockey in Canada and was recruited by the Rockets. One glimpse of UT’s campus and he was sold, choosing Toledo over Cleary University and Liberty University.
“The campus was beautiful,” the sophomore said. “It’s one of the best campuses I’ve seen. And the honesty and the professionalism of Greg and [assistant coach] Craig [Trego]. Both of them are alumni and just the overall excitement of being a part of something that could be something bigger was attractive.”
The club hockey program is part of the Division of Student Affairs, with the university’s recreational services department having direct oversight. The university provides $14,000 of the program’s $80,000 budget. Player fees and fundraising make up the difference.
“We continue to build and add to the program,” said Urig, who has served as GM for 12 years. “There’s always room for improvement. There’s always projects we’re working on to improve the student-athlete experience. But I think we’re in a pretty healthy spot.
Not many teams
Only 59 schools have NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey programs. And they’re mostly contained to the East Coast, Midwest, and Upper Midwest. There are eight schools west of Minnesota (Alaska, Alaska-Anchorage, Arizona State, North Dakota, Nebraska-Omaha, Denver, Air Force, and Colorado College).
Miami (Ohio) is the sixth-most southern program, behind the three Colorado schools, Arizona State, and Alabama-Huntsville, although Huntsville is on hiatus because of a lack of conference affiliation.
In the past decade, Penn State, Arizona State, Long Island University, and the University of St. Thomas have joined Division I.
Why are there so few hockey programs? For starters, the sport’s popularity is based on geography. There’s a reason the SEC has zero hockey programs and the Pac-12 has one. But the biggest deterrent is cost. Maintaining an ice rink, equipment, travel, coaches’ salaries, and scholarships runs well north of $1 million. Bowling Green spends about $2 million per season.
“Everything that I understand about it — and I haven’t done a great deal of digging — is that there are significant costs and facility needs,” said Toledo AD Bryan Blair, who has never worked at a school with a varsity hockey program. “And you have to think of it from a Title IX standpoint. How does it impact your numbers? Do you ultimately have to add two sports instead of one?”
Illinois explored adding varsity hockey for five years, announcing May 2 the university would not become the 60th Division I program. Costs became the biggest impediment, but Illinois was prepared to add the sport before the pandemic. In the past two years, however, the price tag for a new arena has risen 30 percent, according to Illinois AD Josh Whitman.
In an eight-paragraph 763-word statement, Whitman cited the resources needed for name, image, and likeness, awards stemming from the Alston vs. NCAA court case, and the transfer portal as factors in Illinois’ decision.
“Since we began our exploration of hockey years ago, meaningful landscape changes have pushed us to this unfortunate conclusion,” Whitman said. “We have stated repeatedly that we would not advance the hockey project without a sound funding and financial plan.”
BGSU, Miami, and Western Michigan are the only Mid-American Conference schools with hockey programs. Bowling Green won the national championship in 1984. Miami nearly won the 2009 title, if not for an epic final-minute collapse. Western Michigan spent part of the 2021-22 season as the No. 1 team in the country.
The school most similarly-aligned with Toledo is Penn State, which made the jump from club team to varsity sport in 2012-13. The Nittany Lions had fortune on their side, though. Literally.
Deep-pocketed boosters Terry and Kim Pegula donated $88 million — the largest private gift in university history — to build a hockey-specific facility. Annual payouts from the Big Ten and $100 million in football revenue also contributed to the university’s decision to restart the program.
Penn State previously had varsity hockey from 1939 to 1946. The club program was founded in 1971, winning seven national championships and finishing runner-up nine times. Before the construction of Pegula Ice Arena, they played home games at the 1,500-seat on-campus Ice Pavillion.
Toledo plays at 750-seat Team Toledo Ice House, located more than six miles north of campus on Alexis Road. The Huntington Center could be an option if UT added hockey. An on-campus venue wouldn’t be a prerequisite, as playing in a currently constructed facility would significantly curtail costs.
Toledo loves hockey
There is an established hockey market in northwest Ohio. According to Nielsen market data, nearly 200,000 people identify as pro hockey fans. The Walleye have proven to be one of the most popular teams in town, perhaps surpassing UT football.
UT club hockey averaged 120 people per game last season. It’s hard to project how much attendance would rise if it became a varsity sport, but it’s safe to assume more people would attend games.
“I would say it’s definitely grown in the last couple years,” Michelizzi said. “We did have a period of time where no one really knew us. There are a lot of people who are now aware.”
Those most important work in the UT athletic department. Urig noted no discussions have taken place about the potential addition of ice hockey, but he’s quick to clarify that conversations are a two-way street.
“We haven’t exactly beaten down the door saying, ‘Make us a varsity program!’ And they haven’t really reached out to us to investigate,” Urig said.
Ice hockey at the University of Toledo remains a longshot. As the college athletics landscape changes at hypersonic speeds, a wait-and-see approach is being taken by nearly every athletic department.
Hope is powerful, though, and sometimes it becomes a full-blown triumph.
“I’ve been at places where they’ve had a sport that popped up and they were successful,” Blair said. “From the outside looking in, you may not have thought they would be successful. Rice won the national championship in baseball in 2003, and, at the time, they were an outsider that no one thought could compete at that level. Lo and behold, they made an investment and did something that propelled them.
“That’s the beauty of college sports. It’s not just who has the most money and the biggest brand name. You always have a puncher’s chance. You just have to be smart, have good coaches, and be invested. And sometimes magic happens.”
First Published May 14, 2022, 4:00 p.m.