The NCAA Championship Oversight Committee will convene November 10th to immediately reconsider the petition to expand the women’s hockey tournament from 8 to 12 teams for this season.
According to UMD coach Maura Crowell, this comes as a response to the findings from the report published by Kaplan, Hecker and Fink (KHF) law offices last week detailing gender inequities in the NCAA. (Read more about what the report said about college hockey here.)
The report, published on October 25, detailed gender inequities across a number of NCAA sports, but the disparities in hockey were particularly bad. With the new meeting a week away, it was important to make sure the information in the report continues to be noticed, discussed, disseminated and taken seriously.
“Obviously the findings are pretty powerful. I think the numbers speak for themselves in the fact that our sport is one of the most egregious of all in terms of gender equity. We decided that it’s our responsibility, as stakeholders in the sport, to make sure that that information gets publicized,” said Crowell.
An organized effort to draw attention to the inequities launched on social media on Thursday morning. A graphic and message about expanding the women’s tournament to a 12-team field was sent out by official team sites, coaches and assistant coaches and players.
The numbers speak for themselves: It’s time for the NCAA Women’s Hockey Championship to expand from 8 to 12 teams. #CloseTheGapNCAA #TimeFor12Teams2022 @NCAA pic.twitter.com/MdabBgMF0p
— Harvard W Hockey (@HarvardWHockey) November 4, 2021
Harvard coach Katey Stone said it is not a coincidence that the committee has chosen to meet again two weeks after the release of the KHF report. The timing was perfect for the women’s college teams, coaches and players to express a united front in calling for change in their sport.
“What happened with women’s basketball was a great example, honestly, of how a community and a sport can can come together to affect positive change,” said Stone.
Part of what drove change at the women’s basketball championship was the way the player video about the inadequate weight room was spread among first women’s basketball fans, then women’s sports fans and beyond. Crowell hopes people will see that this situation isn’t that different – and that’s not just a women’s ice hockey problem.
“I want to get eyes on this beyond women’s hockey fans, coaches ands players. It’s a women’s sport. It’s a sport issue. Gender Equity is a bigger issue than just women’s hockey,” she said.
“The long term impact (of expanding the tournament pool) is massive. You do that over the years and it’s changing lives of our female athletes for years and years to come.”
The group is hoping to bring similar attention to their situation and be able to force the necessary changes by making the Competition Oversight Committee (COC) and NCAA pay attention.
The proposal to expand the women’s tournament has been in the works for more than a year and in conversation ever since the proposed formation of the New England Women’s Hockey Association (NEWHA) in 2017.
A working group of coaches presented a proposal to the NCAA Division I COC in September asking for the tournament to be expanded to 10 teams – two more than the current set-up. The COC tabled that proposal, citing limited funds for new initiatives after prioritizing rest days for championships in gymnastics, softball, volleyball and men’s ice hockey.
“While the committee supports the merits of the proposal to expand to 10 teams, it agreed to table the matter until the next opportunity to fund it,” was the official decision.
The whole thing was a tough pill to swallow, said Crowell. Beyond the disappointment was the ambiguity of it all – tabled until when? To add insult to injury, the KHF Equity Report noted “though their proposal was tabled, they were also told unofficially that they could have asked for an even larger bracket expansion.”
Stone said the pandemic gave the group the opportunity to hold online meetings and conversations about the state of the women’s college hockey game and really solidify that teams and coaches across the sport are united and organized in pushing for change in their sport.
Though the report breaks down a number of ways in which the NCAA has failed women’s hockey student-athletes, the group is focused on tournament expansion as their priority. They’ll be asking for the removal of the travel provision in bracket selection as well as a change in the way the men’s and women’s championships are supported and funded, but the focus of this push is to expand the tournament field.
“There’s a long laundry list of inequities, but the most important thing is for us right now is to give the opportunity for more student athletes to have a championship experience because the numbers warrant it,” said Stone.
She is referring to what the report called access ratios – or the number of championship slots available relative to the number of overall students playing a sport. Currently, that ratio is 19.5% for women’s hockey and 26.7% for men’s hockey. The proposed expansion to 10 teams would have brought the women’s participation ratio to 24.4%, which is still lower than the men’s.
While fans and media have focused on the entertainment aspect of what an expanded tournament would look like, Crowell said the working group looks at the fact that adding four teams would immediately provide a championship experience for 100 more student athletes – and the student-athletes are meant to be the point of the NCAA.
“You have to prioritize something or you will probably end up with nothing,” said Crowell.
Creating immediate positive impact for that many student athletes, especially in light of last year’s tournament selection which left talented teams sitting home in March, makes it clear that expansion is the right place to focus. It’s also the place the working group has been focused for years.
This is a fight for the women currently playing in the NCAA, said Stone, but also for future generations. The social media effort today is looking to capitalize on the attention being brought to the inequities thanks to the KHF report as well as galvanize support for these changes in a way the NCAA can’t ignore.
“We need to grow the game. And the only way you do that is by creating more and more opportunities with resources,” Stone said. “It has been a concerted effort to continue to shine a light on the inequities in the NCAA, but also that it’s time for change. It’s time to expand and give more opportunities to women’s hockey players to play in a championship.”
Crowell pointed out that while some are calling this a movement, all the tweet does is publicize the findings of a report the NCAA themselves commissioned.
These are the facts as compiled by a third party and if there is damning information contained in the report, there is no one to blame but the NCAA, who created situations that allowed these gaps to exist and flourish and who is responsible for fixing them now that there is no excuse to be made about not knowing.
This is breaking news and will continued to be updated.
