A Sea Of Red

Has the team’s Instagram bio always read “Liberty Men’s D1 Hockey”

https://instagram.com/libertyhockey?utm ... =copy_link

I think so since it is the page for the D1 club team.

There is an announcement planned for today but I doubt it is to announce they are moving to D1 at the NCAA level.

Just the schedule release

This team is ranked No. 3 and absolutely crushed No. 24 Delaware tonight. These kids are good and incredibly fun to watch. Def. worth the six bucks!

There are 5 independent schools this season (Alaska-anchorage, Fairbanks, Arizona state, LIU and Lindenwood) with Stoneville also somewhat recently announcing they are moving up to D1 as an independent. How many independents in college hockey would it take for Liberty to feel comfortable enough to move up without a conference? This is a topic that gets brought up every so often but there hasn't been a better time to be an independent in a long time.

We are already independent at the ACHA level traveling all over the country for games so this wouldn't be much different. The biggest difference being us going from being a consistent top 10 team playing almost exclusively against other ranked teams compared to likely playing a weak schedule as a D1 independent and potentially struggling to get attractive home games. If things stay stable for the next couple years among the current d1 independents we should make the move. With the fan support the team has been getting lately it may even turn into a revenue sport for the school or at least be cost neutral.

Title IX

To my knowledge the issue has always been not having a conference to play in. Title IX is an easy fix by either adding Women's hockey, rowing or golf/gymnastics all of which wouldn't require significant investments in facilities.

Is it really that hard to find a conference that would accept the team? Seems like there are enough conferences in the northeast that we could crash

Dn10 wrote: ↑December 29th, 2023, 8:03 pm Is it really that hard to find a conference that would accept the team? Seems like there are enough conferences in the northeast that we could crash

Going from Club to a D1 Conference is a substantial move. Especially with Title IX implications

Dn10 wrote: ↑December 29th, 2023, 8:03 pm Is it really that hard to find a conference that would accept the team? Seems like there are enough conferences in the northeast that we could crash

The majority of D1 hockey teams are small schools on a shoestring budget. Those new england schools in particular try to minimize travel as much as possible, they have no appetite to add a school 3+ states away.


If you look at this (slightly outdated) map of hockey schools we would be on an island by ourselves. Alabama-birmingham also had to drop hockey because their conference dropped them leaving them with no one to play but the alaska schools. Outside of Arizona state joining a conference the number of independents keeps growing. There is some interest for the independents to form their own conference so they have a better path to the post season but the NCAA currently has a moratorium on new single sport conferences so nothing can happen until that ends. If the conferences of independents were to happen that would be our chance but it doesn't seem likely anytime soon.

Atlantic Hockey in theory COULD work but agree they’d probably want some travel subsidy.

It could, they are accepting applications for expansion and already have air force as a member so they are willing to accept geographic outliers in the right circumstances. Considering there are already a couple independents in their own backyard I assume they'll just add one or both of those schools though.

Atlantic hockey is also currently undergoing a merger with a womens hockey conference as well so the womens team would also have a home. If Liberty was actually interested in moving up to D1 for hockey this would be their chance but I assume a bunch of small new england catholic schools would be reluctant to add a large evangelical school that will dwarf their resources.