Lindenwood Belleville, Davenport, Lindenwood, Marian, Waldorf and McKendree CONGRATS!!! You have ruined ACHA Club hockey by offering “GRANTS” to students.
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“You’re not wrong Walter. You’re just an a**hole.” - The Dude.
Hey Cheaters - relax for a minute.
First off, there is a big difference between being ‘fully funded’ and ‘cheat(ing)’. Secondly, I am surprised this board would allow deflamatory comments towards multiple programs - that I assume are unfounded - to not be removed.
Being fully funded (or partially) is not against the rules and I would assume that the ACHA would encourage this for the growth and reputation of the league. The ACHA landscape is not a level playing field and never will be. Some teams are funded in the range of $50-150k by their schools and some receive no funding at all. Some teams have their players pay anywhere from $1000-4000 to play hockey and subsidize the expenses, some teams have no player dues. Some schools can pay their coaches (or find full time jobs at the school) and some cannot. Some teams have the use of great facilities, and some even have on-campus ice rinks, while some pay through the roof to play in crappy barns. The landscape will never be level - do your best with the situation you have been dealt and take steps to grow in the right direction.
Clearly - offering scholarships, grants, or other funding that is not in line with what the school offers non-student athletes is against the rules of the ACHA. I know LU-B has been rumored to offer these and is the main reason they were not voted in by the ACHA D1 coaches. I dont know this to be true, and have not heard any prior rumors about the other schools you included. I would think that if this was the case someone would know and the D2 commissioner would be informed of it.
Your post on the Central Rankings thread seems to suggest that ‘Club’ hockey should revert back to the old days when it was almost an intermural league between different school. I think the ACHA has grown into a reputable and highly skilled league and clearly there is a need for a league for talented hockey players to continue their playing days while earning an education. The ACHA has 3 leagues to accomdate teams of all levels and ‘funding’. What else can they do?
This is not a participation medal league. 5 teams will win a title this season (3 men, 2 women).
"Clearly - offering scholarships, grants, or other funding that is not in line with what the school offers non-student athletes is against the rules of the ACHA"
This is what I am talking about in my rant. There are schools offering full ride funding for the players to come play there and even paying for all of their equipment. All 5 of the schools mentioned have their coaching staff as full time paid employees of the University that have substantial financial advantages almost all ACHA programs.
Part of what makes for a successful forum is to allow people to post rumors and announce their beliefs publicly. HOW one chooses to do that will help others determine the credibility of the post and the poster. As we all know, the ACHA is filled with all kinds of personalities. Fortunately, we’re blessed with many experienced and professional people that can help publicly maintain effective and mature discussion with sane and rational replies.
In other words, I’m giving you guys enough rope that you can choose to hang yourselves with it if you so desire. I’m not (yet) into censoring comments that I or the majority do not agree with.
Be reasonable, people… 
The BoardBoss
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I appreciate it and will be more professional about this. How is it fair that schools with full time coaches and above average budgets are allowed to be in the ACHA with these players also being give “grants” or scholarships for another sport in order to participate on the ice hockey team? This is happening more and more each season and this year I believe it has finally peaked with programs such as the above mentioned. Come 2017-2018 will these programs all be moved to the new NAIA division? If this power is only happening for this season, acceptable. But I feel they all need to be moved into that division come next season to be fair in that aspect. I will not say much more about this but after the past few weeks of seeing these teams first hand, I had to say something.
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Stick tap for speaking out! 
Yet, you have to make peace with it. Seems as hockey is big part of your (and mine) life, and just like life – hockey is not really fair at any level.
If you are level headed – you could see the parallel between the circus with upcoming Nov 8th event and hockey on this specific subject 
This is happening in all divisions, not just D2 Central. It’s mostly the private schools that ‘find’ you money to offset costs. It’s not fair, but it is what’s happening.
Not allowed - scholarships or grants based on participation on an ACHA hockey team.
Allowed - paying coaches, school funding, player equipment/sticks provided, travel expenses covered (food & hotels)…
If you have any real knowledge of grants being offered or given to players that would be deemed illegal - send it to the leaders of the ACHA and they will deal with it.
As for all the items listed above that are ‘allowed’ - I dont see anything wrong. It seems that you want great oversight ensuring a level playing field for all teams. This is not only unrealistic it would be a logistics nightmare. The ACHA is grosssly undermaned in its infrastructure which we have seen in the past when it comes to the website, rankings being released, post season awards, etc. Not only that - where do you draw the line on ensuring equality?
Some teams cannot afford icetime so do we limit teams to one practice a week? Can teams only travel in 15 passenger vans as some do vs high end coach buses (and air travel)? Can teams not provide gear so all teams look like adult hockey leagues?
Equlaity would mean all teams are pulled down to ‘bush league’ status.
The league has come a long way and does its best to offer different divisions to accomodate all teams of different abilities. What you are suggesting would take the ACHA back 30 years.
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Correct. Which makes it even more goofier. Don’t vote them to D1 but leave them at a level they will be well above competitively.
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Well my point was totally made.
Davenport - 1
Lindenwood Belleville - 2
Waldorf - 4
Lindenwood - 5
Marian - 6
McKendree - 7
Besides Davenport and Lindenwood who have been around for a long time, the other 4 teams have come out of no where over night to be in the top 10. You want to know why? Because they are at an advantage over most ACHA teams. Of course someone is going to want to go to a school to received a “grant” or a “academic scholarship that is only given to somoen who plays on the hockey team”. Free money towards school will make someone do that. Congrats to all 6 of you teams on your top 10 rankings, you bought your way to it. YOU ARE A CHEATER!!!
Varsity division is coming to the ACHA where scholarships will be allowed for next season. Deep breaths.
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Hey, a little dead to start the season but now HockeyRock is starting to sound like the good ole Hockey 101 boards.
Many private universities use grants to make their private univ tuition more affordable and competitive to public universities. Academic grants are a routine concept at NCAA D3 too. Without grants, private universities would fold and lose every student (athletic and non-athlete) to in-state public universities. Giving academic grants does not equal cheating.
In fact, I think private universities giving grants isn’t the biggest reason for success, it’s the funding from the univ that makes recruiting much easier. Coaches of funded programs attend junior and AAA showcases and casting much wider recruiting nets, compared to volunteer coaches at traditional club programs. Many of those traditional club teams just rely on word of mouth, localized recruiting with local high school, AAA/youth programs, and with current players recruiting old friends/teammates.
The differences between traditional club and funded programs exist at all levels of the ACHA. The ACHA likes the funded programs because they pay the bills and also increase the competition and perception of the ACHA. The ACHA could simply have a rule that all programs funded 50% or more by the school competes at ACHA DI. Having a rule like that would help cut down on the differences between the teams’ resources. It wouldn’t be a stretch since DI already has a minimal budget rule that makes it a bit more evenly spread (esp with the top half of ACHA D1 teams).
Although, as one of the earlier posters said, there’s always going to differences between teams and variety with funding, univ support, cost of attendance, public private, etc…
Twisted. Variety division of 9 teams isn’t much to say the problem is fixed. Plenty of fully funded schools staying put at all levels of play.
I’m all in favor of the ACHA having rules that they can actually enforce. This isn’t one of them.
And being “fully funded” doesn’t mean the level of play is improved; it means the kids in the east and Midwest don’t have to pay as much out of pocket or spend even more time away from class work to do fundraising, and it means the teams out west can actually afford to exist at all (i.e., travel and play other schools).
Enough said. http://www.fortsaskatchewanrecord.com/2016/11/17/former-hawk-flying-high-in-us
ACHA WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!
Teams do not just turn into powerhouses over night. There are some very shady things going on with a lot of these school.
This comes up every year. There’s a difference between an athletic scholarship and other kinds of scholarships (academic-based, ethnic-based, gender-based, financial hardship-based, etc.). Many teams help incoming players find and apply for non-athletic scholarships to help pay for school. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s completely within the rules. Can’t help but notice that article doesn’t specify what kind of “big scholarship” the player received, so it hardly amounts to evidence of wrongdoing. But if any other teams want to file a complaint about it, they’re more than welcome, I’m sure.
Thanks FB, well said. The ACHA has investigated articles such as this in the past and found they in fact were not scholarships. Local news reporters tend to not know the significant difference between hockey scholarships and university grants (shocker that the “news” misrepresents the facts or is not wholly accurate, right?). If any team files a complaint or if we see articles such as this, we investigate. The ACHA will investigate this news story as well. University grants (open to the entire student body), fully funded programs, or paid coaches do not violate the ACHA by-laws. We are a member run organization operating with a board - if at anytime, the membership believes the policy and operations procedures should be changed, there is mechanism to alter the by-laws after each season. From my humble perspective, if all 430 of our participating universities supported club hockey like [X University], by building an arena on campus, fully funded their five ACHA programs, paid their coaches a stipend, and provided bus transportation to away events, the ACHA, our member teams, our 13,000 collegiate student-athletes, and most importantly, all those high school kids who lace em up and play the game would benefit tremendously. S
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Also see the @Sheriff response:
Enough said. The issue is being addressed by the ACHA. Feel free to start a new thread of discussion with NEW information that will be helpful to the community. 
The BoardBoss