As much as I wanted to see this happen, this announcement of a Stadium Series against Villanova University was nothing more than an April Fool's joke setup by the Gamecocks on April 1. However, the idea of this got me thinking how interesting it would be to see the three Canadian schools who play in the ACHA south of the border return home and play in U SPORTS. They've had fairly successful runs in the ACHA, so why not offer them a spot in the highest level of Canadian university hockey?
Before we even get into the discussion about university sports, it would appear that any institution who wishes to become a "university" by name needs to meet some criteria. Each province grants university status based on their own needs within their province, and this is important because there isn't a set of guidelines that applies across all provinces. As an example, Mount Royal became a full-fledged university in Alberta in 2009, and MacEwan was granted university status in 2012.
To gain that university status, it would appear there's a checklist of requirements that all universities have to meet as a basic requirement including institutional quality assurance principles, degree-level programming, and an appropriate governance model between between faculty and administration. Once an institution has that, it makes a formal application to the province in which it resides, and the province adjudicates the application. If everything meets the requirements, a school can officially call itself "a university".
Maybe we aren't so close in a couple of these cases based on that info in the previous paragraphs, but let's examine this for fun as it is. After all, more opportunities for women getting post-secondary degrees while playing hockey at the highest level in this country is nothing we should dismiss in any way.
We'll start in the west with Assiniboine Community College Cougars, who play in the ACHA's Division 2 grouping, were the 2019 ACHA Divison 2 champions after defeating Minot State in the final. They joined the American circuit in 2016 and have steadily improved each season as shown by their 2019 victory followed up by a title defence this year in 2022! Like the Mount Royal Cougars and MacEwan Griffins in the ACAC, it might be time to welcome the third Cougars team to Canada West after all their success in the ACHA!
What would make this an interesting and appealing school to add to Canada West is that it makes the conference into a ten-team circuit while adding a second team to Manitoba and a fourth team to the eastern side of the conference. There's no doubt that Alberta's four schools skew the travel for a team like Manitoba into the upper ranges, so having more local games with a school based in Brandon would be ideal for Manitoba.
Beyond that, the ten-team conference would ensure every team plays every week without bye weeks. Having a longer season means that we'll get truer results over the length of the season, and each team would be competitively better with a more diverse field. By adding Assiniboine Community College who have shown a knack for winning, Canada West would be adding a tenth team who will make everyone compete harder immediately!
The next team I'd advocate for in terms of joining U SPORTS would call the OUA home as the Sault College Cougars (another Cougars team?) would make the jump into the Canada university ranks. Sault College would be an immediate rival of the Nipissing Lakers, but sit another 300kms to the west of where Sudbury is. The distance from Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay is a hike at nearly five hours, but the flight to Toronto for games would be around 70 minutes. In other words, this is achievable!
Sault College went 10-5-1 last season to earn a berth at the ACHA National Championship tournament where they defeated the University of New Hampshire and the University of Vermont before calling to the ACC Cougars mentioned above. For a team that completely rebuilt itself this season, finding their way to the National tournament while posting a solid record is nothing short of impressive!
"When I came on, it was a full rebuilding year and we knew that," head coach Brianne Veale told SooToday's Brad Coccimiglio. "We had two players returning from the previous team."
With a fairly youthful group that has already shown they're ready to compete, the Sault College Cougars seem poised to do big things at the ACHA level in the coming years. Their success in the ACHA has already led to more players from the northern Ontario region to consider Sault College as a post-secondary option if they want to continue their hockey careers, so it seems like everything is trending in the right direction for the Cougars!
The third team who should be part of the U SPORTS family already doesn't even need to apply to be a university in Canada. Lakehead University made the decision to join the ACHA in 2015, officially joining the circuit in 2016, and winning the whole thing later that year! Just to prove that it was no fluke in their victory over North Dakota State in 2017, the Thunderwolves went out and repeated as champions in 2018 over Minot State!
Lakehead University is located in Thunder Bay, some eight hours by car from Sault Ste. Marie, so it would certainly be the westernmost team in the OUA. Considering that Manitoba is eight hours from Saskatoon by car, the drive would be the same in terms of the time it takes to make the trek. For every other game, the Thunderwolves would need to fly, but they're already doing that anyway to get to places like Chicago, Maryland, and Brandon, Manitoba. They'd also ramp up the northern Ontario rivalries with Sault College and Nipissing if they were part of the OUA schedule, so this seems like it would be a no-brainer.
What does concern me, however, is that the Lakehead Thunderwolves cancelled the 2020-21 season out of safety during the pandemic, and I can't fault them for that decision. The concern comes from the complete lack of any existence beyond that announcement in July 2020. There hasn't been a single thing posted on the team's website in over a year and all their social media accounts stopped with that announcment. Is there even a team at this point?
Assuming that there is a team in Thunder Bay at Lakehead University, the addition of Sault College and Lakehead University would give kids in the northern Ontario region tw new schools to consider for post-secondary options, bring two strong teams into the OUA to make it better, and create instant rivalries for Nipissing that were lost when Laurentian University pulled the plug on its teams. Beyond that, there could be a fun regional competition between the three northern Ontario schools to see who wins the season series with the winner taking home a trophy! How much fun would that be?
Regardless, there would need to be a bunch of dominoes to fall for all three of these schools to find homes in U SPORTS, but it seems pretty clear that they all have the necessary talent to be able to compete right off the bat if they were admitted. What should be noted is that all three Canadian ACHA teams have performed extremely well, and they deserve your support if you're near any of those schools. Women's hockey in Canada will only get stronger with a greater investment, and the best investment you can make is to attend games, get to know the players, and support these programs.
Canadian university hockey looked really good this season. Having these three teams would, in my opinion, only make it better still, but we shouldn't not support them just because they play elsewhere. Go see and support these teams as they compete for the 2023 ACHA championship next season!
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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