Can someone comment on that, and additionally are their other teams in Atlantic Hockey that are not utilizing their scholarship allotments?
Army and Air Force don't use any obviously. RIT isn't allowed to offer any either since they're a DIII school which wasn't grandfathered with most of the others (Clarkson, RPI, etc.). Other than that, I'm not sure. You're right though. If AIC wasn't using all of theirs, than it wouldn't surprise me if others weren't as well.
AHC expanded from 14 to 18 full scholarships a couple of years ago, but some schools rolled them out gradually. I did not realize that Div 3 was the limitation for RIT, as many of the other AHC schools that have scholarships are Div 3. Certainly someone on the board can clarify, as there have been entire threads on this topic the past couple of years.
NCAA rules currently state that a DII or DIII school can move up to DI in one men's and one women's sport, but cannot offer scholarships in those sports (or a DI number of scholarships in the case of DII schools) unless they move their entire athletic department up to DI. There are two exceptions to this rule that apply to hockey:
This first was an agreement made about ten years ago that grandfathered in a number of programs that had always been playing DI hockey. Clarkson, St. Lawrence, RPI and Colorado College were covered by this exemption, allowing them to offer the full allotment of DI scholarships (Johns Hopkins lacrosse and Hartwick College soccer are a couple of other notable examples of grandfathered in programs). RIT and Union College in the ECAC, both DIII schools, were not covered by the exemption and as such can't offer scholarships. Union doesn't seem to care, but RIT has been campaigning to get there own exemption.
The second exception is an NCAA rule which allows schools to play up a division and offer the full allotment of scholarships in that division if there is no national championship offered in their own division. This applies to the DII schools playing in the AHC (and other conferences) since the DII National Championship was discontinued in 1999. Because there's no DII championship for hockey, those schools (Bentley, Mercyhurst, AIC etc.) are allowed to play DI hockey and offer the full allotment of DI scholarships (Atlantic Hockey limits the number of scholarships available for its members, but that's just a conference rule).
D1sAHC expanded from 14 to 18 full scholarships a couple of years ago, but some schools rolled them out gradually. I did not realize that Div 3 was the limitation for RIT, as many of the other AHC schools that have scholarships are Div 3. Certainly someone on the board can clarify, as there have been entire threads on this topic the past couple of years.
Ok, thanks. I forgot that RIT and Union were Div 3 as recently as 10 years ago, when the other schools in the CHA that joined AHC were already playing Div 1.
D1s
Army
Air Force
Sacred Heart
Canisius
Holy Cross
Niagara
Robert Morris
D2s
AIC
Bentley
Mercyhurst
D3
RIT
I've never really understood why Union wasn't grandfathered in with the others since they have been playing at the DI level since '91. I guess that just wasn't long enough. Like I said, they've never really complained about it, so I guess its no big deal for them (they did win a national championship after all).
AIC to move fulltime to the Mass Mutual Center. That is huge for their program.
http://aicyellowjackets.com/news/20...ckey-to-make-massmutual-center-home-rink.aspx
Ya that's a big deal. Hopefully it helps them draw more and attract more students. Good to see that AIC seems to really be taking their program seriously for the first time in a long time.
MassMutual Center I read has a capacity of 8,000 fans, the majority of AIC would be unable to fill that place on any given night. No doubt a dream to play hockey in a venue such as that, but from a fans perspective perhaps too big a venue.
