It came up in the thread about Cassell Coliseum and I realized I don't know what situation that the Hockey team is in as a club sport. Are they held up from trying to become a varsity sport from budget? from Title IX implications? Both? are they even looking to become a varsity sport?
I have to give it to the guys that commit to playing for that team because they go a long way to represent our school without much support from our fan base.
One other thing I realized when looking into it:
They probably have a better website than Hokiesports.com is for the actual varsity sports, although updates seem to have a eight to ten day lag.
http://virginiatechicehockey.com/
The team went 19-7-1 this season according to their schedule. It appears they play a mix of teams throughout. I am not sure how they did in the playoffs as that hasn't been updated.
As a side note, in searching for information about our ice hockey team, I also learned that we have a Roller Hockey club team as well. There doesn't appear to be any crossover between the two teams rosters.
Comments
I brought up hockey in that other thread. As far as I have heard, I don't believe creating a varsity hockey program is even on the radar right now, but if you ask me, it should be. The team right now competes very well at the club level. Even more impressive, they are a relatively good draw on a nightly basis, while playing their games in Roanoke. From what I understand, you will see anywhere from 2,000-5,000 fans at the Civic Center for home games. For a club sport, this is REALLY impressive. I would think that attendance would be even stronger if we were to make it a varsity sport with an on-campus facility.
Right now, our next sport is Women's Golf. After that, we're looking at a long time before we add in another sport. If I were to guess, I would think the next men's program would be lacrosse, just because of the strong ACC foothold the sport already has, and the fact we could use existing facilities to make it work. After that, you're going to have to add in the same amount of scholarships in women's sports before you can even consider expanding again for men. All said and done, a men's hockey program could sadly be a pipe dream for us fans.
I remember Weaver saying on TTL that women's golf would be the next sport added 'when the budget could manage it'. Of course, that was right at the time that we entered the ACC. Evidently Weaver didn't think anything else about it for the next decade. Let's hope Whit has a different perspective. My guess would be that lacrosse comes in before anything else for men. The problem with that is that lacrosse has a high number of players on the team, and the ACC doesn't have a full complement of programs, so travel then becomes a budgetary issue. As you do, I think hockey is far down the list. Shame...
I think we need to win a football national championship. Then we need to win several more football and other sports championships. Then we need to institue a national HOKIE HOLIDAY. This seems like a good trajectory, a solid business plan, but.....then again, I am prone to random thoughts.......
There are several sports that I believe are only club sports at tech that probably should be changed or added. Hockey, Field Hockey, crew.
Men's Lacrosse, which has been a club since 1948.
Forgot about that one.
This was actually brought up amongst donors a few times. Last I heard, the only thing keeping the Hockey Team from being "Varsity", is the lack of an actual facility for Hockey on campus. This is something that the new AD can help with. They would need to figure out a location to build it, and the costs and such to build it. They haven't allotted a budget for it from the general athletic fund, but you CAN donate and specify the money toward the Hockey Team.
Last time I heard in 2011, they had a couple hundred thousand dollars set aside from donors specifically requesting their donation be put toward a hockey facility.
That's awesome. I think we should do it.
Would be awesome if this could happen. Penn State just made the jump from club to varsity last year and they got a BEAUTIFUL new hockey arena on-campus this year. Granted hockey has a much greater presence in PA and the B1G than the ACC, and their facility cost $88 million which I'm assuming is a ton more than our budget would ever be, but still.
I think it would be a virtual certainty that any new hockey arena would be a part of a Cassell rebuild/replacement. We just can't afford to do it any other way. The likelihood of having a whale donor like PennSt had and that whale wanting to spend money for hockey, not football or basketball is... let's say... remote.
I remember seeing the VT hockey team practice in roller blades on the small concrete hockey ring/court/field next to the tennis courts. I always thought our program would never take off due to poor facilities. I mean we don't have basketball practice on grass and it is a big difference between concrete and ice.
I believe there is a street/roller hockey team. Don't thinkthey are the same as our ice hockey team.
I used to be friends with someone on the Ice hockey team and I believe they travel to roanoke for every practice.
That was my understanding a well, but I wasn't sure.
That's correct. The OP has the link to the Roller Hockey team. They have apparently upgraded their facility a bit as it appears to be a full rink with a new paint job from the photos on their website.
Some idiot must have hijacked my TKP account and made that comment. Of course the real me knew that was the roller hockey team. Of course...
Technically how you worded it was still correct, so you avoid any time in the Cake room in the new dungeons of Cassel.
Yeah, the reason I heard about it and got so much information was because I was having a conversation with one of the donors from the Board of Visitors and was like "It would be so awesome if VT had a hockey team." Then, I got much of the information I stated in my last post from him.
He said "We do! However..."
He also told me, though this was a couple years ago, that everyone who donates and marks it for a hockey facility for the team would get access to the box seats (he did not mention a minimum) and first dibs on tickets whenever it does get built.
Yeah I definitely believe we should do men's (& women's) hockey before women's golf and lacrosse.
I have gone to several of the hockey games in Roanoke and there has always been a good crowd. I think if there was a way to have a facility on campus and make it a varsity sport that it would boom. Sadly, I don't see that happening in the near to mid future but I hope I am wrong. Also, this may be a dumb question but I am going to ask it. Would there be a way to give the Cassell a major overhaul and allow it to support hockey or would the easiest way be to build a new multi-purpose facility? I am guessing that the cost would be more upgrade than just build a new one.
I believe the bowl of Cassell is basically one giant slab. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how feasible it would be to convert the current facility to an all-purpose like you're proposing, especially when you consider how close to the court those walls already are, and how you'd need to widen the ends even further to accommodate a rink.
That's what I was thinking but wasn't sure. I guess structurally it isn't possible then.
NHL rinks are 200' x 85' and Basketball Courts are a much smaller 94' x 50'. Its just too much bigger. But somebody might have a way of doing it, maybe by taking a few rows out to accommodate the rink and then adding collapsible rows to move out when in basketball mode. It would be a major pain in the a$$ though.
What's the size of NCAA rinks?
The same.
I looked it up for my own curiosity.
"As nearly as possible, the dimensions of the rink shall be
200 feet long and 85 feet wide. The corners should be rounded in the arc
of a circle with a radius of 20 feet"
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/rules/fielddiagrams/IceHockey.pdf]
It seems like it would just be easier to build a new facility all the way around if the admin and board ever wanted to bring hockey to campus.
This is what I want to happen! My dad and I were just discussing the other night how awesome
it would be to go to the burg for a hockey game instead of Roanoke. I think it would
totally be worth to make remodeling changes to the Cassell for this. At least we could have a
larger crowd for these guys and keep them on campus.
Yeah it would be awesome!
I would be at a lot of games if this happened.
Same here. I would try to make at least 75-80% of them.
One thing's for sure, it's clear we need a men and women's varsity hockey team. It's clear that the US won't beat Nadians without some former Hokies on the roster.
Penn State just got into Varsity hockey. Construction cost $88 million. That's one hell of a price tag but I hope it happens someday.
Was that a Hockey only facility? or multipurpose?
Hockey only
Pegula Ice Arena
Very nice. One day hopefully Tech's athletes get something like that.
They had a whale donor provide a lot of that - ala Tudor Jones @ UVa. EDIT - I couldn't remember the details, but I knew it had to do with the Buffalo Sabres, and a whale donor. I Wiki'ed it, and here's the deal. Terry Pegula made a fortune off natural gas discoveries in the Marcellus Formation, which is the one in Pennsylvania, NY, etc. He eventually sold his company off for over $4 bil, and bought the Buffalo Sabres. While he was doing that, he also gave $100 mil to PennSt to be used to further the hockey program ONLY. As a result, they spent $88 mil on that sweet arena. It also created a ripple effect with conference affiliation that caused about as much jumbling as the football stuff did a while back. Anyway, that's how PennSt could afford to do that. Fascinating story, about the arena, but more about Pegula himself. I had read about it a year or so ago, and remembered just enough to know where to check to refresh.
Yup. And now we have the Pegula Ice Arena on campus up here.
For some reason, edits aren't taking hold right now. So here's the link
http://www.gopsusports.com/pegula-ice-arena/
i always assumed it was their basketball arena when i've seen them on tv. that's pretty pimp.
Can we just conk PSU AD Joyner on his crane and jack the rink while he's unconscious? Please?
Yeah, it's nice. But I doubt we'd get a donor to pony up $88 million for us to build one
GET WHIT ON IT!
STAT!
Just saw these custom leg pads posted on Facebook and had to refresh this thread. Not sure if they're for one of the club team goalies or not, but they are absolutely sick.
Foghorn Legpads
Now if we could just something, something #AllMaroonEverything...