When Alison Lee heard Syracuse was adding a women’s ice hockey team, it was enough to keep her at SU. Lee, a sophomore goalie on the club hockey team, briefly considered transferring. It wasn’t entirely a hockey decision that made her contemplate leaving, nor was it entirely a hockey decision that kept her on campus. But hockey no doubt played a part.

The club team, which is 5-2 this semester, will play second fiddle to a varsity team being added next season. Yet the reaction from Lee was not bitterness, but instead excitement. The captain, junior Catherine Petringa, echoed the same sentiment. They care so deeply about their sport they are simply happy the athletic department is recognizing it and adding it to the slate. Plus, it’s an opportunity for them to at least have an attempt at something greater than most anticipated when they enrolled at Syracuse.

This is the other side of the swimming outrage, which has resulted after the athletic department pulled the rug from under the swimming and diving teams to add a women’s ice hockey team, and possibly a men’s ice hockey team down the line. The Save Syracuse Swimming campaign has been a vocal one, and to its defense, the swimmers and divers have a reason to be upset. But here is the other side. It’s Lee’s voice on the other end of the telephone, with the excitement that she will be at a school with a Division I team.

‘Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to try out,’ Lee said. ‘It kept me in Syracuse.’

There is no telling Lee’s chances of making the team, nor any of her teammates’ chances. The roster decisions will be up to the head coach. Syracuse has yet to hire a coach for the varsity team, which is not unreasonable considering it’s the middle of the ice hockey season, and a coach of a current program likely wouldn’t leave their team midseason to join a program not yet in existence.

‘We are going to have an awesome program, and we are comfortable with our coaching situation,’ Director of Athletics Daryl Gross said in a statement to The Daily Orange earlier this month. A source told The D.O. a coach might not hired until April; the intercollegiate season ends on March 22.

At that point, the coach will need to put together a team of approximately 20 players. There will be scholarships, although there is no formal indication of precisely how many. Presumably, there will be walk-ons, too. Perhaps some of those walk-ons will be on display this weekend, when the club team will host an eight-team tournament at Tennity Ice Skating Pavilion on Saturday and Sunday that will include nearby schools such as Cornell and Colgate.

Petringa said the club players have all discussed trying out for the team. She is honest in admitting most of the players are not of Division I caliber, and two of the standouts on the 5-2 squad attend the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, so they will not be eligible for the SU team next season. But Petringa has heard whispers that perhaps SU will look to field hockey players to fill out the roster, and in that case, she was optimistic the current ice hockey players might be a better option.

Most of the players did not come for hockey, as a varsity player would. It’s more recreational. Yet they play, which will be an inherent advantage next season.

‘There aren’t a lot of girls who like hockey as we do, I’ve come to realize,’ Lee said.

That will be at the core of whether the varsity team will be embraced. The attendance this weekend might be an informal indication of how well a team will catch on. When asked how many people usually attend a Syracuse game, Petringa stalled for a moment before finally letting out the laugh she politely held in.

‘Ten or 15,’ Petringa said. ‘We’ve made Facebook events. Usually the crowd is the freshmen when you’re best friends with everyone. They come together and take the bus. Then the next year it’s the next freshmen.’

Eight teams this weekend will generate more interest and a bigger crowd is expected. Regardless, hockey is the type of sport that would seem a natural fit on this campus and within this area.

‘When I say I go to Syracuse, (people) automatically think there’s a hockey team,’ said Lee, who is from Los Altos, Calif. ‘Syracuse needs a team because of the location we’re in.’

That burden has always fallen on the club – the one that will be on the ice this weekend. They are in a portentous position. They are the last amateurs, the last non-scholarship women’s ice hockey team on the campus. And in an odd way, that is something that excites them, not because of the distinction but instead because of the opportunity.

Zach Berman is the featured sports columnist for The Daily Orange, where his column appears weekly. E-mail him at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on February 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm