Stonehill College is moving up to Division 1, joining the Northeast Athletic Conference in a move that will include men's and women's ice hockey, but with both teams competing outside that conference.
The Skyhawks men's hockey team will play D1 hockey in the 2022-23 season, but will just do so as an independent. The Easton, Mass.-based school will join the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Anchorage, Arizona State University, Lindenwood University and Long Island University as one of six independent teams. The South Dakota-based Augustana University will become a seventh D1 independent team beginning in 2023-24.
"In the short term, we want to make sure we set up our student-athletes for success to be able to compete successfully at the D1 level," Stonehill Athletics Director Dean O'Keefe told New England Hockey Journal. "We're looking to build a schedule with a combination of competitive D2 and D1 games that will start the building process. We know that a high-flying D1 hockey program isn't built in a day, and we won't build our D1 program in a day either, but we're looking forward to what we can accomplish over time."
The women's hockey team was already slated to begin playing in the D1 New England Women's Hockey Alliance (NEWHA) for the 2022-23 season, so this move is transparent to the original plans announced in 2020. The pandemic delayed the Stonehill women's team launch by a season, but all is on track for the Skyhawks to begin play in the fall, under head coach and former Boston University defender and women's assistant coach Tara Watchorn.
"Our D1 women's team provides a good template for us," O'Keefe said. "It didn't exist 12 months ago, but what coach Watchorn and her staff has been able to assemble in terms of a competitive roster in their first season makes us feel confident that we can build a D1 (men's) program the right way."
Several members of the MIAA Division 1 girls hockey champion Austin Prep Cougars will be joining the inaugural Stonehill squad: Maeve Carey, Lauryn Hanafin and Kathryn Karo.
The Skyhawks Division 2 men's team went 7-19-2 this season, losing eight of their last nine games. However, they upset St. Anselm's College in overtime Feb. 26 in the NE-10 tournament first round before falling to Assumption College in the semifinal round.
Head coach David Borges enters his tenth season behind the bench. He previously served as varsity head coach of Coyle & Cassidy High School in Taunton, Mass., leading his teams to a 121-50-8 record in nine seasons before making the jump to college. Stonehill will have to kick its recruiting efforts into overdrive, as there are less than six months to go before the new college hockey season starts.
The new addition to D1 provides opportunities for junior players who have been left out of the recruiting race because of the trickle down effects of the COVID pandemic, and the NCAA's decision to allow another year of eligibility to all enrolled players during the 2020-21 season. That has created a logjam in a lot of cases of unavailable roster spots that should have been opened by the natural graduation process. Stonehill's entry will give hope to those who have been on the bubble with other D1 schools that they can get an opportunity to play college hockey next season. This is especially important to players from the 2001 birth year who will be aging out of juniors at the conclusion of this season.
Stonehill does not have a dedicated rink facility, currently playing out of the Foxboro Sports Center. While there is nothing definitive, O'Keefe confirmed that the move of the men's program to D1 and the start of the women's team gives a future on-campus facility some urgency.
"It's something that is very much on the radar," he said. "It was (on the radar) when our men's team was D2 and now with two varsity D1 teams, it heightens our awareness to look at that and accelerate the process."
The larger implications of yet another entry into the D1 men's ice hockey space is that the NCAA could be forced to give serious consideration to realignment in the not-to-distant future. With the trend of smaller schools making the move to D1 in hockey seemingly on the uptick, the challenges of managing so many independent teams and schedules could become an issue sooner rather than later.
"I imagine most institutions would like to be in a conference," said O'Keefe. "I hope that at some point, we can find a home in the right conference that helps us to grow the sport while elevating our program and providing our student-athletes with the best competitive environment for them."
Notable Stonehill College hockey alumni include current U.S. National Team Development Team under-17 head coach Dan Muse (Canton, Mass.), who also spent the last several seasons as an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators, and goaltender Chris Tasiopoulos (Newton, Mass.), who earned consecutive NE-10 conference goaltender of the year awards from 2013-15.
