Re: Union Hockey 2011-2012 Season Thread "We Can See Cleary Now"
Hello Dutch-fans!
Long story short, some of us were talking about games between D-1 and D-3 programs over in the D-3 forum and the subject drifted to the development of D-3 hockey and from there to Union's ascendancy from D-3 to D-1. Because I had nothing better to do today I spent a few hours collecting some Union history, both hockey and otherwise, and posted it on the D-3 forum here:
http: //board.uscho.com/showthread.php?97352-DI-D3-Exhibitions-this-Sunday
and copied it here below. The whole Bonner/Harkness story was amazing. If anyone's got more details to add, please do. And good luck to the Garnet in 2011-2012!
Mule: I love looking at it too!
You mention Union College, which is a school whose history, both hockey and otherwise, fascinates me, too.
Here are a couple of historical notes:
Founded in 1795, Union holds itself out as the first institution of higher learning chartered by New York State. Only Columbia is older and it was founded by a royal charter granted by King George II.
In the 1820s and 30s Union was the birthplace of college greek letter fraternities in the US and has been called the "Mother of Fraternities". Kappa Alpha Society, Sigma Phi, and Delta Phi, known collectively as the Union Triad, were founded there between 1825 to 1827. Several other fraternities, including Psi Upsilon (1833), Chi Psi (1841) and Theta Delta Chi
(1847) were also founded at Union.
During the first half of the 19th century Union experienced great success and was ranked with Harvard and Yale among the top colleges in the country. By 1839 Union had one of the largest faculties in American higher education and an enrollment surpassed only by Yale. It was one of the first colleges to develop a scientific curriculum alongside the traditional "classical" curriculum and Union's President, Eliphalet Nott, was thought by many to be the preeminent college president in the US during the period.
In 1881 Chester Arthur, Union class of 1848, became the 21st President of the United States.
Union hockey began in the early 1900s, but, unlike its neighboring upstate New York schools, like RPI and Clarkson, it enjoyed no particular success and hockey was dropped as a varsity sport in the 1940s.
After World War II, Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan joined Bowdoin and Dartmouth in signing the so-called Pentagonal Agreement regarding college athletics and academics. In 1971 Union joined the Pentagonal colleges (other than Dartmouth who had joined the Ivy League in the meantime) and Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts University, in forming the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
About the time it joined NESCAC, Union had a new president named Thomas Bonner, who wanted to raise the profile of the school's athletic programs. Bonner hired the former Army football coach, Tom Cahill, and the controversial former RPI, Cornell and Detroit Red Wings coach, Ned Harkness, as head coach and rink manager for the revived Union hockey program. Bonner apparently told the coaches to do whatever was needed to win -- and win quickly. Harkness built the new hockey program from the ground up. Achilles Center was built. The school began play in NCAA Division III and was instantly successful, finishing with a 20–4–1 record in the 1975–76 season, their first since the 1940s, with a roster full of freshmen. Harkness followed up this initial success with a 22–3–1 season, and the young program was well on its way to becoming a Division II powerhouse. Sports Illustrated wrote the Harkness comeback story up in February 1977:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...47/3/index.htm.
At the same time, however, there was a huge amount of controversy over the limitations imposed by NESCAC on Union's athletic aspirations and in May 1977 Union decided to leave the NESCAC. See:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?ni...g=1191,4829816.
The 1977–78 season started off with the team going 4–1–1 record in their first 6 games. However, in late December, four of Harkness' top players were put on academic probation and barred from playing. Harkness was furious and quit the team. There were reports that Harkness had violated NESCAC recruiting rules (and then lied to Union College President Thomas Bonner about it) and that admission standards for hockey players had been compromised. Many of the Union players had come in as freshmen well into their twenties, having played for Canadian Senior teams; others were NHL draftees drawn by the chance to play for Harkness and his plan to jump the team to Division I. Upon hearing of their coach's decision to leave, the entire team refused to play the remainder of the season in a show of solidarity with their coach.
Overnight, the school's JV team turned into the varsity and due to the scandal, Union's schedule was rubbed out. They were forced to play a makeshift schedule which included games against prep schools such as Hotchkiss, Trinity-Pawling, and Kimball Union, as well as games against other school's JV teams. They went 0-13-0 and there wasn't a single close game among them. The team was outscored 146-32. As for Harkness, he instantly resurfaced as the founder/GM of the AHL's Adirondack Red Wings. In 1982, he was appointed president/CEO of the U.S. Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid.
In May 1978, Bonner left Union to become President of Wayne State University. He had never recovered from the Harkness controversy. See:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...+gazette&hl=en
Union went back to D-3 hockey the following year, except they were no longer NESCAC members, and stayed there until 1991 when it accepted an invitation to replace Army in the Division 1 ECAC hockey league. Last winter Union won its first ECAC regular season championship.
)
