A team on ice

There's a game at the Class of 1923 Ice Rink this Friday night, but the players lacing up their skates aren't varsity athletes.

They weren't recruited, and they're not playing on the University's dime.

Instead, the players are those on the men's club hockey team, one of Penn's 33 club sport squads run by the Department of Recreation.

The men's club hockey team has 21 players, and it competes in the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Hockey Association against club teams at schools such as Princeton, Temple and Saint Joseph's.

The women's team, which has about 18 players who dress for games, even went to the national championships in 2004 and was invited the following season but could not attend due to conflict with spring break.

Ice hockey is "run probably as close to a varsity program as any of our clubs," said Al Pendleton, associate director for Structured Sport at Penn.

Ivy League Hockey

Of the eight Ivy League universities, only Penn and Columbia do not feature varsity ice hockey squads.

Penn did have a varsity men's program once, but it was dropped in 1978 due to budget constraints.

The six Ivy schools that do field a team play in the 12-member Eastern College Athletic Conference, along with schools such as Colgate, St. Lawrence and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Ivy League teams have fared well, winning the past five men's and women's league titles.

Not having a varsity program is a "huge disadvantage for Penn," men's club captain Matt Bessette said. "Hockey is a sport that the Ivy League can excel at, and it's unfortunate that Penn hasn't chosen to pursue that."

Indeed, Harvard's men's team won the NCAA Championship in 1989, and its women's team has finished runner-up three of the past four seasons.

A major reason that Ivy schools are so competitive in ice hockey is the lack of programs on a national level.

Only 59 schools feature a Division I men's hockey team, and about half as many (33) compete on the women's side. Compare this to 300-plus teams suiting up in basketball, and the prospect of a Penn team making the Final Four in hockey seems much more realistic.

Varsity Hockey at Penn

"We have been proud of what we did in hockey, but we had no choice but to cut sports," Penn President Martin Meyerson said at the time the program was eliminated.

Proud as Meyerson was, the Quakers were in the midst of their fifth-straight losing season when the announcement was made.

After that season, the program was dropped and later transitioned to club status.

According to the athletic department, bringing back a sport that was dropped requires that the program receives full funding from outside sources, a figure that could reach $20 to $30 million for men's and women's varsity programs.

But even if money weren't an issue, starting up varsity teams would take a few years, since it would require the University to recruit high-school players looking for a more competitive atmosphere.

Still, men's club coach Dave Berger said he would like to see Penn suit up a team again.

"It's a huge loss for Penn not to have a varsity ice hockey program," Berger said. "You've got a great facility here that's built for a varsity program. It's a sport you can get the whole Penn community involved in."

The University cited budget concerns as its reason for dropping the program. However, other schools have shown that hockey can be a revenue-generating sport.

At Cornell, for instance, the men's team routinely sells out its 3,800-seat arena. If Penn could draw comparable numbers to its 2,900-seat rink, hockey would be the third-highest attended sport behind only football and men's basketball.

Another key question is whether a newly-formed varsity squad would force the club team out of existence. With recruited athletes filling the rosters, would there still be a place at Penn for the casual hockey player?

"It would be nice if they managed to incorporate some way for there to be a varsity program, while at the same time retaining something for people who want to play at a lower level," women's co-captain Joanna Levy said.

Sports like soccer and baseball have done just fine with both a club and a varsity team at Penn. However, it could be more difficult to arrange for hockey, given the limited ice time at the Class of 1923 Rink.

"It would be more of a Penn-centralized rink," said Bryan Isola, the rink's general manager; many of the outside organizations that currently use the rink probably would not be able to anymore.

A future with no rink?

Over the summer, the University released Penn Connects, its thirty-year plan for development on east-campus lands.

On it, the parcel of land including the ice rink is listed as a possible site for future development.

This confirms rumors that had begun swirling last fall that the ice rink is not in the University's long-term plans.

But according to Associate Vice President Mike Harris, the teams' current players need not worry that their facilities will be taken away from them.

"There are no immediate plans to shut down the ice rink," Harris said. "The ice-rink site may be the site of future redevelopment because Walnut Street is so important, but it would be 10, 15 years or more before anything can be done."

But what would it mean for the teams if the rink were in fact razed?

For starters, it would require the teams to travel to practice, and the Quakers would likely see less ice time as a result.

"The closest rink would be probably about a half hour away in N.J.," Isola said. And "they would probably have a hard time getting ice times."

Even if the teams did get time slots at another rink, they would face increased costs without the benefits of a home facility.

The captains of both the men's and women's teams said losing the rink on campus would significantly hurt, if not outright end, the club teams.

"The ice rink is very essential to our program," women's co-captain Amanda Cohen said. "There are only a couple of people who have cars on the team, so it would be impossible to get everyone to another rink."

Levy put it more bluntly.

"When the rink goes, the team goes," she said.

On the men's side, Bessette said he thought the program could survive the loss of the facilities, but the team would likely see its participation levels drop.

"I think we would lose a few guys, just because of the time commitment involved," he said. "It's a lot easier just to walk down to the rink. We have our own locker room here. We obviously wouldn't have that at some other rink. It makes a huge difference having the rink here."

Ice hockey has been a part of Penn's history for over 100 years.

Although today's teams only have club status, they reflect that deep-rooted tradition and show that there is still interest in the sport at Penn. The destruction of the ice rink would endanger that tradition.

But there is still hope for the teams if the rink goes down.

On January 13, the women's team won't be needing its home ice when it faces off against Penn State - they're playing at the Wachovia Center.

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