- November 15th, 2006, 1:01 am
#41293
The sky's the limit for UVa hockey clubhttp://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Sa ... th=!sports
By Sean McLernon / smclernon@dailyprogress.com | 978-7247
November 14, 2006
Roger Voisinet looks at University Hall and sees the future of Virginia ice hockey.
The building doesn’t necessarily have to be converted into an ice rink, although the general manager and assistant coach for the UVa men’s club ice hockey team would love to see it happen, considering the arena is barely used now that the basketball teams have moved across the street to the new John Paul Jones Arena.
More importantly for Voisinet, however, is that the proposal gets the administration thinking about the future of a team that has made its home at the Charlottesville Ice Park on the Downtown Mall for 10 years.
“The most essential thing is to start a dialogue about the idea,” Voisinet said. “I’m using U-Hall as a way to visualize the idea. It’s an athletic facility in the right place and needs to be re-used somehow.”
Athletic Director Craig Littlepage would encourage Voisinet not to hold his breath. Littlepage said University Hall would be used for the next five to seven years as “swing space” for outdoor programs that would need indoor practice time during inclement weather. After that, the building, along with nearby Onesty Hall and The Cage, will be torn down to make room for a new field house that would include an indoor field, a running track, locker rooms, and other things needed for Virginia’s varsity programs.
That leaves ice hockey on the outside looking in.
“It would be a tough varsity sport for us because we don’t have a facility that could accommodate it, and also there isn’t a history of other varsity programs in this region,” Littlepage said. “On that basis, [ice hockey] is not a natural sport for us to sponsor.”
Don’t expect Voisinet to stop dreaming. Not when he has witnessed the transformation of Miami (Ohio) University’s hockey program from nonexistent to No. 1.
“Even if it’s a longshot, it was a longshot at Miami,” said Voisinet, who was a member of Miami’s first men’s ice hockey team in 1966. “For 10 years we were told ‘No, we could never do it.’ We went from a non-varsity hockey program with no rink to No. 1 in the nation in 40 years with a new rink. I’ve seen it all happen in my own little lifetime.”
So why couldn’t it happen again? Voisinet can’t think of a good reason why not.
In 1976, the 10th year of Miami’s program, the Redhawks played their first game at its on-campus ice hockey rink, a requirement for Division I status. Three decades later, Miami was ranked the No. 1 team in the country in Division I.
The 2005-06 season marks the 10th year of the Virginia program, which Voisinet helped get started about the same time the Charlottesville Ice Park opened downtown.
The Cavaliers, who compete in Division II of the American Collegiate Hockey Association, have won seven Atlantic Coast College Hockey League championships since 1995. Head coach Rob Boyle has led the club to a 3-4 record this year after the Cavaliers came up one game short of their eighth ACCHL championship in the 2005-06 season.
Virginia typically plays in front of a few hundred fans and community members who stand along the boards at the Ice Park. Because of public skating sessions, Virginia’s night games start no earlier than 9:30 p.m. Although the games are broadcast by Charlottesville’s ESPN Radio affiliate (840-AM), sophomore defender Doug Francken believes it would take an on-campus arena to generate interest among UVa students.
“[An arena] would open up a whole bunch more opportunities,” Francken said. “I feel like there would be a stronger fan base being in a central area. Hockey is great spectator sport, so it would garner more interest and jack up the team a little bit.”
Although there are no Division I programs nearby, Voisinet noted that Liberty University in Lynchburg opened a new on-campus rink this season and the Washington Capitals play their NHL games only 100 miles away.
Freshman forward Alex Glazer believes a state full of lacrosse fans would find hockey just as appealing.
“Virginia is a great lacrosse state, and the best way to attract fans is to describe it is lacrosse on ice, in a confined area,” said Glazer, whose brother Charlie played on the 2006 NCAA champion Virginia lacrosse team. “It’s on a faster surface, which makes the games more exciting, and it’s lower-scoring, so the goals mean more.”
As a club team, the squad receives a limited amount of money from the University. The $10,000 it gets from the student activities fund helps, but it is not nearly enough to cover the team’s budget, and all 20 players have to pay almost $1,000 each to help make ends meet. Voisinet said the team also has a hard time getting its recruits into UVa. All 30 players on Voisinet’s list were denied admission last season and three of them are attending rival Duke instead.
In the short term, Voisinet is focused on getting those players on campus and improving the quality of the squad.
“The top goal is to get the University to say ‘This hockey team is doing great and we want to help them with at least getting in some of their better recruits into the school,’” Voisinet said.
It’s a modest goal for a man who likes to dream big, but it’s a start. That, after all, is all Voisinet is really looking for.
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