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

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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 →

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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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With its secret jerk sauce, M&J Jamaican serves a taste of the tropics →

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Donnet Joseph is a second shift machine operator. She also cooks up some of the best Jamaican dishes in Madison as M&J Jamaican Kitch’n.

Joseph cooks out of Christine’s Kitchens, a shared prep space on the city’s east side. Lately, her schedule could find her mixing up jerk sauce at 3 a.m. after a shift at the factory, or finishing up a stew at midday before she puts in 12 hours operating a machine.

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Wisconsin chef is among the creators of new indigenous food publication →

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A groundbreaking Indigenous multimedia publication and cookbook has begun publishing, and a Wisconsin chef plays a central role.

Chef Kristina Stanley, an adjunct professor at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton and former business owner in Madison, is project manager of The Gathering Basket, a new online indigenous community journal.

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Madison-based K and C Bakery is a pandemic passion project

A plate of brightly-colored, spongy mini bundt cakes flashed like a beacon under the tent of K and C Bakery on a recent gray and drizzly day in Monona. Despite the disagreeable weather, customers at the Monona Farmers Market queued up to grab boxes of baked goodies.

These kinds of interactions have led to a lot of happy tears in the four short months the business has been up and running, said Kelsie Fowler, one of the bakery’s owners.

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

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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 →

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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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'Food is the connector': UW-Madison chef aims to reinvigorate traditional African meals →

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On a warm Friday night in October, jazz music mingles in the air with the smell of collard greens at Cafe Coda, a Black-owned music venue in Dane County.

Out front, the Adem Tesfaye Band has patrons dancing, and in the back room, Chef Yusuf Bin-Rella is preparing collard greens for the musicians and VIPs to have at their set break.

Inside a pressure cooker, greens, Scotch bonnet peppers, onions and garlic that were pulled from the dirt at Troy Farm on Madison’s north side by Bin-Rella about an hour prior were blending with bacon and smoked turkey. The result was a mouth-watering scent that lured people backstage.

Bin-Rella hadn’t necessarily planned to cook. He was at Cafe Coda to see friends and unwind, but he can’t resist feeding people.

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On Monroe Street, Garth's Brew Bar encourages beer experimentation →

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Garth’s Brew Bar may be located just steps from Camp Randall, but the vibe on this stretch of Monroe Street is very different from the raucous crowds that flock to Badger football games in the fall.

Owner Garth Beyer himself got into craft beer during his college days, so he doesn’t discount that some of the clientele for his curated American craft beer bar may come from campus. But there’s one key thing about the college kids that like craft beer and frequent Garth’s.

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Let's Eat: El Burrito Loco celebrates 20 years of lunch on the Square →

The El Burrito Loco food cart is a colorful beacon on the corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Main Street. A mainstay of the Madison food cart scene, the small trailer that owner Magally Richter decorated to evoke similar vendors in her hometown of Mazatlán, Mexico, has occupied this corner of Capitol Square for 16 of its 20 years in business.

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Women’s DI College Hockey: How freedom and chaos beget success at Colgate →

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It’s impossible to follow the Colgate women’s hockey team without seeing their motto “We Play Free” hashtagged on nearly every social media post. It’s not just a marketing tactic and it’s not tied to the school’s Raider mascot. It’s a directive.

Or better yet, a declaration.

While much of the hockey world is predicated on systems – that is, a firm set of tactics that define how a team plays – the coaches at Colgate teach a system-free approach. When they say “We Play Free,” they mean freedom on the ice to be creative and to make mistakes.

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Northeastern’s Aerin Frankel wins 2021 Patty Kazmaier Award →

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Northeastern senior goaltender Aerin Frankel has been awarded the 2021 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award. The honors were presented live on NHL Network this year as the in-person Patty Kazmaier Ceremony was cancelled due to COVID-19.

The award, which is in its 24th year, is presented annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s hockey by the USA Hockey Foundation.

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

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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.