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Rink won't bring hockey club much closer to NCAA team status
By Casey Hobson
The Bridgerland Community Ice Arena is expected to help the Utah State University hockey club in many ways. It will help increase attendance, revenue and practice time. It will not, however, bring the USU hockey club much closer to being sanctioned by the NCAA. In fact, it's debatable whether it will help at all. "A little, but not much," said Associated Students of USU Executive Council President Nate Anderson, who is also a co-captain on the hockey team. "Two things need to happen for this team to be sanctioned: there needs to be a balanced women's sport, and there needs to be a movement among Western universities and colleges to sanction hockey as an NCAA sport. Until that happens, I don't think you'll see any more sanctioned teams west of the Mississippi." Anderson said only five schools west of the Mississippi River have sanctioned hockey teams, and these schools don't have football programs as a result. Title IX restrictions might be one reason some schools cannot sanction their hockey clubs. The federal civil rights law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, requires universities to offer an equivalent amount of male and female athletic scholarships proportionate to the number of male and female students attending the university. "One of the tough problems you face with hockey is the Title IX equity for sports, which is a good rule in my estimation," Anderson said. "There needs to be a women's sport to balance scholarship opportunities and so on. Even if we found some way to avoid the scholarships --I don't know what all the NCAA requirements are --We need to have other teams in the western U.S. to play, and that gets very cost prohibitive." If USU can figure out a way to comply with the Title IX regulations and the Western colleges begin to sanction hockey as an NCAA sport, then one could conclude the administration would consider sanctioning the hockey club at USU. However, Anderson said he thinks that day will come later than sooner. Until that happens, the Aggies will have to make do with what they have. "We appreciate the support we have," Anderson said. "We'd like to be sanctioned, obviously. That would be nice. But realistically, with the environment that's out there, it's not feasible for Utah State University or any university west of the Mississippi."
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Archived Months:
September
1998 |
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