NCAA Women's Hockey: Ohio State are the 2022 National Champions

Kenzie Hauswirth's shot from the near boards deflected off the skate of UMD's Nina Jobst-Smith past Emma Söderberg to score the game-winning goal and give the Buckeyes their first-ever National Championship Sunday.

After not getting on the board first for much of the playoffs, OSU had opened the scoring with a hustle play from Paetyn Levis and Clair DeGeorge on the power play. Ohio State averaged just less than a power play goal a game this season, scoring 36 in 37 games.

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NCAA Division III hockey: Women’s hockey a natural fit at Milwaukee School of Engineering

When an alumna donated a rumored $4 million dollars earmarked for expansion of women’s sports opportunities at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), it seemed natural that one of the first programs added was women’s hockey. The university already fields a men’s hockey team and has their own rink, so few structural changes were necessary.

One big missing piece at the Kern Center, the recreation facility on campus that houses the ice rink in the basement, was a need for women’s locker rooms and additional coaches offices in order to immediately add five new women’s teams – lacrosse, hockey, swim, golf and bowling – as well as expand their women’s track and field options.

The MSOE men’s team has had varsity status since the 1998-99 season and play in the Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA), where it is expected the women will play.

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Women’s Hockey: 43% of players competing in Beijing Olympics played NCAA D-I hockey

Of the 230 women rostered on 10 teams set to drop the puck next Thursday in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, 102 played at least one season of NCAA Division I hockey. Five more women are committed to start their NCAA career next season.

In total, 107 women have connections to North American collegiate programs. They represent 32 Division I schools, one Division III school and two U-Sports programs. Twenty-nine of the 105 women are currently enrolled in college or have remaining eligibility in their collegiate career.

Every Division I conference is represented. There are four CHA teams, 10 ECAC teams, nine Hockey East teams, one NEWHA team and eight WCHA teams (including since-shuttered North Dakota).

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Division I Women’s Hockey: NCAA removes minimizing flights from bracket selection criteria

The NCAA formally approved the expansion of the the women’s hockey tournament to 11 teams for the 2021-22 season yesterday. But two big changes to the women’s bracket selection process were also quietly made.

The women’s hockey pre-championship manual has always included a stipulation to prioritize cost reduction and fewer flights when setting up the quarterfinal matchups. “Pairings in the quarterfinal round shall be based primarily on the teams’ geographical proximity to one another, regardless of their region, in order to avoid air travel in quarterfinal-round games whenever possible.” (View the 2019 pre-championship manual here. Criteria on pages 13-14.)

As first reported by Todd Milewski in the Wisconsin State Journal, that criteria has been removed from women’s hockey championship selection criteria.

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Division I Women’s Hockey: NCAA approves immediate expansion of bracket; 11 teams to compete in 2022 National Championship tournament

The NCAA announced Thursday it has approved an immediate expansion of the women’s ice hockey championship bracket from eight teams to 11 teams. The expansion will take place for the 2022 tournament. The 2022 Frozen Four is being hosted at Penn State March 18-20, 2022.

Per the release: “The 2022 National Collegiate Women’s Ice Hockey Championship will feature the top five seeds in the tournament receiving a first-round bye. The fifth-seeded team will play at the campus site of one of the top four seeds. Three first-round games will be played at the campus sites of three of the top four seeds in the tournament.

The winners of the first-round games will have a day off before playing in the quarterfinals. The tournament will stay on its current schedule since no weekends will be added with this format.”

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NCAA Division I Women’s Hockey: Coaches, teams organize on social media to demand expanded tournament field

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.

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Phase II NCAA external gender equity review report details disparities in women’s, men’s college hockey

After videos went viral last March detailing the inferior weight room setup provided to the women’s basketball championship, NCAA president Mark Emmert commissioned an external gender equity review across all sports.

Phase one of the report came out in early August and focused specifically on men’s and women’s basketball. Monday’s report was the second phase and detailed inequities across all other NCAA-sponsored sports.

The 154 page report can be found here and it should be required reading for anyone involved in sports. The majority of the report is a breakdown of inequities in individual sports, but the opening 60 pages do a stellar job of showing how the problems shown therein are systemic, problematic and fixable.

This report contained no information that was surprising or groundbreaking to anyone that has spent time around the NCAA and in particular, women’s college hockey. The inequities are not new. While helpful to have the information gathered and reported from an outside source and freely available to the general public, it also does not matter if the report does not incite major change.

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Women’s Division I College Hockey: Fontaine’s overtime goal sends Northeastern to their first-ever national championship game

ERIE, Pa. – The Northeastern Huskies advanced to their first-ever NCAA championship game with a 3-2 overtime win over Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs Thursday night at Erie Insurance Arena.

Senior defender Skylar Fontaine intercepted a pass at the blue line and skated across the goal before shooting back at the far post to beat UMD goalie Emma Soderberg and win the game for Northeastern with 26 seconds left in the overtime period.

UW women 2, Northeastern 1: Badgers repeat as NCAA champions after Daryl Watts' overtime goal bounces off of defender's back

ERIE, Pa. - Daryl Watts and Kennedy Blair both said they transferred to Wisconsin to win national championships. They did exactly that as the Wisconsin women’s hockey team defeated No. 1 Northeastern, 2-1, in overtime to earn the program’s sixth title.