As part of a recent settlement agreement, the NCAA will be expanding scholarships across all sports, replacing previous scholarship restrictions with roster size limits. This new structure option will take effect in the 2025-26 academic year, coinciding with another significant change: the sharing of revenue with student-athletes.

Old Model: 18 Flexible Scholarships

Under the current model, Division I ice hockey teams can offer up to 18 scholarships, which can be divided among as many players as the coaching staff sees fit. There is no limit on the number of roster spots, allowing teams to carry an unlimited number of non-scholarship players.

New Model: 26 Fixed Scholarships

The new option presents a different approach: teams must roster exactly 26 players, each of whom will receive a full scholarship. No partial scholarships are allowed, and teams are required to maintain 26 players throughout the entire season. If revenue-sharing dollars are available, they would be distributed among these players.

The Dilemma for Men’s and Women’s Hockey

For men’s ice hockey, where the average roster size last season was around 30 players due to frequent injuries, limiting the roster to 26 spots could be problematic. Teams may find it difficult to maintain a full squad throughout a grueling season.

On the women’s side, the new structure might offer more scholarships than necessary. Last season, Division I women’s teams averaged about 25 players, a number slightly inflated by graduate students taking advantage of a fifth year of Covid eligibility. Most coaches suggest their ideal roster size is between 24 and 25 players, including three goalies. Typically, teams only need 20-22 skaters and two goalies for the season unless a significant number of injuries occur.

Key Considerations

1. Financial Viability: Many programs, especially in women’s ice hockey, may struggle to afford 26 scholarships. Women’s hockey is not a revenue-generating sport for most schools, and increasing scholarships from 18 to 26 could significantly raise operational costs.

2. Top Programs’ Advantage: Schools with large athletic budgets, like Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, are most likely to consider adopting the new scholarship model. These programs benefit from substantial revenue streams from TV deals and their football and basketball programs.

3. Optimal Roster Size: Most women’s teams only require 22-24 players, making the new 26-player requirement potentially excessive. Even last season’s national champions, Ohio State, had just 24 players, while runner-up Wisconsin primarily utilized 22 players.

4. Playing Time Concerns: Elite players might opt for programs where they are more likely to play, rather than sitting in the stands as the 24th, 25th, or 26th player on a top team. This trend has already been observed with the current transfer portal, and it may intensify under the new scholarship model.

5. Impact on Ivy League and Smaller Programs: Ivy League schools, which do not offer athletic scholarships, and other programs unable to afford 26 scholarships, could find it increasingly difficult to compete for top talent. This could further widen the gap between the elite and less-funded programs in women’s hockey

The Road Ahead

While the new scholarship model has the potential to increase opportunities for women’s ice hockey players, the actual impact will depend on how many schools can and will adopt it. The coming months will reveal which programs opt for the expanded scholarships and how this change will shape the future of collegiate women’s hockey.

Learn More on CHAMPS+

CHAMPS+ Subscribers can watch former DI coach, Harry Rosenholtz from College Hockey Showcases discuss the new scholarship rules during the August CHAMPS+ Webinar:

Why we started Champs

Hi! I’m Ray and I’m a hockey dad. In addition, I am a below average hockey player with an above average love of the game. Both my kids play youth hockey here in northern California. This hockey season, if there is one, my kids will be playing U14, with my daughter being a 2006 birth year and my son is a 2007. I have no expectations for where hockey will take my kids other than I know that hockey will help them develop life skills they can take anywhere.

Crazy Hockey Parent?

At the same time, like any somewhat-crazy hockey parent, over the past few years I have tried to give my kids every opportunity to be the best they can be when it comes to hockey. This includes waking up at well-before the break of dawn multiple times a week to take them to practices and private lessons at our local rink (which is almost 20 miles away) plus travelling 300+ miles each way for regular season games in SoCal.

My daughter has only played on boys teams so far during her hockey experiences, last season playing on a slightly above-average Bantam AA team. So, we think she is probably an above average 2006 girl player, but we don’t really know how she compares. This spring we had planned for her to attend several girls recruiting showcases and go through the USA Hockey Selects process. The expectation was we could really get a good feel for where she was in her development and hopefully receive feedback from college recruiters/coaches on how she compares to her peer group.

From Quarantine to Champs App

Well, we all know what happened in March 2020 as hockey and the world shut down due to the Corona virus. With all the showcases, tournaments and USA hockey camps cancelled, that’s when I took it upon myself to help kickstart the recruiting process for my daughter. I assumed building an online profile page for my daughter which included key information plus highlight videos would be a start. So I decided to try to build my own website using a popular website builder.

After several days of manipulating a web template that was created for a completely different audience, I was able to get it to look pretty good. However, I couldn’t imagine other hockey parents trying to do this on their own. I then looked at other sites that are in the “college athlete recruiting” business and while they did offer the ability to create basic profiles, they seemed more concerned with upselling you on advisory services. I asked myself why isn’t there a simple “LinkedIn”-like app for the women’s hockey community? In addition, there must be thousands of parents out there just like me trying to figure out how they can help their kids on their athletic journey.

Time to Build

Having done several startups I wanted to see if someone else thought this was a viable idea. I contacted my friend John Lorance who is a technical genius and someone I have partnered with off-and-on for almost 15 years. Turns out he had been thinking about a similar type of platform for a completely different audience, but with many of the same characteristics. He liked the idea of building such an engine and using youth athletics as the perfect use case.

This is how the idea for Champs was born. The Champs mission is to help youth athletes be the best they can be. Specifically, assisting them to meet their goals in both academics and athletics.

We are planning to take a slightly different approach on how to navigate these challenges and get to the next level, whether it is their next team, next level, prep school, juniors, college or pros. By focusing on creating a lifelong sports network and community, athletes can both promote themselves and find resources/opportunities via the Champs App.

Drop the Puck!

Given my personal passion, Champs will focus first on hockey and specifically Women’s Ice Hockey. The cliché I’ve heard frequently is how hockey is a small community and everyone knows everyone, so Champs will be a good test. As we grow, we hope our community pulls us into adjacent sports, especially since we know many hockey players are multi-sport athletes.

So welcome to Champs! I am sure there will be ups and downs along the way as we figure this out. Hopefully you can be part of the journey as we all try to enable youth athletes to strive to achieve our mission.

Ray

P.S. Here is a screenshot of the web page I designed back in February that spawned the creation of Champs. When the app launches, I will update this post with a link to her profile on Champs