Donna Maier is the face of women’s hockey at the moment. She is full of enthusiasm, in love with the game, and remarkably inexperienced. Though she has lofty dreams, Maier is not sure what–if anything–her hockey future holds.
Maier, the captain at Illinois, is fresh off competing in the Central Collegiate Women’s Hockey Association championships, held last weekend at Lake Forest College and Glenview Ice Arena.
Neither of those sites has ever been mistaken for the United Center, which says something about women’s college hockey in the Midwest. The CCWHA had to play games as late as 11:50 p.m. last weekend, because that was the only time it could reserve the rinks. The teams that competed are club level, meaning they receive little or no funding from their universities.
The gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team has focused the spotlight on women’s hockey. But if the sport doesn’t capitalize on its new-found popularity now, it may be years before women’s hockey gets another chance at becoming mainstream.
For now, the sport is full of the likes of Maier, who plays defense for the Fighting Illini. Maier never played hockey until her sophomore year in Champaign. Growing up in Naperville, she had neither the inclination nor the outlet to play the game.
“Most of us hadn’t played until we came to U of I,” Maier said. “I had never paid attention to a hockey game.”
Maier isn’t just the captain of the team at Illinois; she’s also the president and must help raise funds to support the team. One day, perhaps soon, the dollars will flow more easily. The Olympics has even spawned talk of a women’s pro league.
“I think it’s probably similar to the WNBA,” said Andrew Twombly, president of the CCWHA. “It’s going to be tough, but I definitely see it coming down the road.”
That’s a logical comparison, but also extremely optimistic. The WNBA began play a year ago with NBA marketing dollars behind it after two decades of women’s basketball’s growth at the collegiate level. Another women’s basketball league, the ABL, also started up last year.
Women’s hockey doesn’t even have an NCAA-sponsored championship, though an informal tournament will be held this month in Lake Placid, N.Y. Scholarships are available only at a handful of East Coast schools.
What the sport has is people like Twombly, who stopped coaching at Lake Forest College in 1996 to found the CCWHA. Twombly figured the schools that played each other consistently should form a conference and hold a championship.
Club teams from Lake Forest, Illinois, Western Michigan, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State joined. Ohio State has won the first two titles; it beat Western Michigan 5-4 in Sunday’s final.
The conference was also formed to achieve varsity status for its teams. With a conference and a tournament, club teams can present themselves to their athletic departments as organized and serious enough to merit varsity consideration.
Four of the six schools in the league have varsity men’s teams. With gender equity, schools may choose to elevate a women’s team to varsity status to even out overall athletic scholarship distribution. However, the expenses associated with hockey, especially equipment needs, may preclude that.
But if that were to happen, the sport gets a boost that may be more important than the one it received in Nagano, Japan. If not? Well, it would be tough for a women’s pro league to succeed if the country’s most passionate hockey states don’t even have varsity college teams.
For now, the teams scrape by. Western Michigan, for example, is only able to practice twice a week, at 6 a.m., because the women must schedule around practice for the men’s team.
“You don’t have too many ways to get me up that early,” Western Michigan center Elizabeth Grey-Kraatz said.
Grey-Kraatz grew up in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, seven hours north of Calgary. She played hockey as a child but had to stop in high school because the boys league was too physical. There was no girls league to join.
Grey-Kraatz landed in the CCWHA where her coach is a senior. But she’s determined. So is Maier, who promises that she will keep playing after she graduates this spring.
“Somewhere,” Maier said, “I’m playing hockey.”
