The 2024-25 NCAA Hockey season is officially underway!
Here are some links to early season results at the Division 1 level- DI Men’s Ice Hockey Rankings – USCHO.com | NCAA.com
and at the NCAA Division III Level- DIII Men’s Ice Hockey Rankings – PairWise | NCAA.com
Players in college use this pathway, continued participation in Hockey, to prepare them for college life. Being on a team, representing your school, and pursuing difficult goals all come with their own merits, but playing and continuing to pursue to play hockey in college presents each athlete with unique challenges and obstacles, and given the small number of institutions fielding teams at the college level (roughly 140 total – D1, DII,DIII) there is an intensely competitive demand to fill those roster spots.
Take for example the APR, or Academic Progress Rate. This tracks all NCAA athletes, and holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term. Men’s Ice Hockey routinely scores at or near the top of this category when compared to their peers, with 10 Division I schools (out of 61) scoring recording scores of 1000 (including Clarkson, Colgate, Penn State, University of Nebraska- Omaha and all Ivy League schools). Comparatively Penn State, Colgate and UNO all scored 10-50 points lower in both Men’s Basketball and Football.
Consider also, Graduation rates.
NCAA men’s hockey student-athletes continue their remarkable academic success, posting a 94.6% NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) in the latest data, released Wednesday by the NCAA.
That single-year data, which measures student-athletes who enrolled in 2011, is men’s hockey’s best single-year number since the NCAA began tracking GSR in 2002. It ranks second among all Division I men’s sports in this year’s data behind only skiing (95.2%)
http://collegehockeyinc.com/articles/2018/11/ncaa-hockey-graduation-rate-reaches-record-high.php
Off the ice, representing your school, like an NCAA athlete does, has its own merits, as well as the strong social ties you can create through relationship building. These all can translate well upon graduation, when athletes find themselves now in the workforce. Sports- related attributes such as :
- Ambition (#1)
- Teamwork (#14)
- Work Ethic (#15)
- Loyalty ( #10)
All these traits are honed from pursuing your favorite sport at the NCAA Level.
15 Top Qualities Employers Look For in Job Candidates | Indeed.com
If you are a player looking who desires to play hockey in college… it is a worthy pursuit.
And the data shows, that if you are a parent and your child wants to play hockey in college, it is not something that will undermine their academics in college. In fact, it will help them, and further prepare them for their post- college life.
By Andrew Trimble
Andrew Trimble is the General Manager and Co- Owner of the New England Wolves Hockey Club. He is also the Owner of Scoring Concepts LLC, a New Hampshire based hockey training company that offers camps, clinics, private lessons and teams. He has coached at all levels from Learn to Skate to College Hockey. For more info on his teams and programs check out- www.scoringconcepts.com or www.ne-wolveshockey.com
To Purchase Andrew’s new book “The Hockey Planner”, click on this link- The Hockey Planner: A Year by Year Plan to Assist You on Your Hockey Coaching Journey: From Learn to Play to Junior Hockey: Trimble, Andrew: 9781963743388: Amazon.com: Books
