It was a cold, dreary day in February and I had just put the final touches on my Game of the Week article for the week of February 10th, 2017.  I read it one more time and finally satisfied, I pushed the “publish” button.  At this point, the Game of the Week (GotW for short) series has gotten a bit of a following and whether or not I’m accurate when predicting the winner, you can be sure I always pick a great game to follow.  This particular week in February, I picked the Butler Bulldogs vs the Xavier Musketeers as my GotW (here’s the original article).  It was a game in the Indiana Collegiate Hockey Conference Crossroads Tournament that I felt would be worthy of the Hoosier Hockey Faithful.  Unfortunately, Ball State had some unforeseen issues arise with the university which resulted in the team having to drop out of the tournament.  The ICHC had to make some quick changes in format and Butler ended up playing number one seeded Indiana University in their first game that weekend and well, it wasn’t quite the game that Butler/Xavier would have been, as the Hoosiers trounced the Bulldogs.  So why am I bringing this up?  Because in digging into this little D3 club hockey tournament, we uncovered the next evolution in Indiana hockey.

I don’t want to steal too much thunder from the collegiate hockey panel that will be fielding questions at our Indiana Hockey Summit on July 22nd, but I really do believe that not only the growth of D3 hockey, but its ability to sustain itself is a key indicator of overall hockey health in our state.  Remember, these D3 or club programs, get little to no help from their respective universities so these programs are tasked with raising their own money for jerseys, game and practice ice, and road trips.  When six collegiate teams are able to continue being viable year after year and play a 15-25 game season, that speaks loudly about what’s happening in our Indiana hockey community.  Granted, every once in a while, one or two of the clubs will run into issues with the university or financing issues that take them off line for half the season, but I would argue that has more to do with team leadership and management than it does with actual viability.  For instance, IUPUI's program struggled and folded before the season got started but rumor is they were working off a proposed budget of around $2K for the season. That's just bad planning.

Don’t get me wrong, I know for the majority of these teams, being viable means quite a bit of work for the student managers running the show.  I had a chance to speak with Kyle Kortebein and Noah Brayton this past season and they filled me in on what it took to not only get their Butler men’s hockey program off the ground, but to also keep it running.  Luckily, they said Butler University actually contributes about $5K to their program but they were required to put together a five year business plan (you catching this university leaders?  A business project around a hockey team!).  Additionally, they were able to snag a partnership with Bauer for discounted equipment which goes a long way in a sport where the players have to fund their own gear.  Still, the number of man hours spent fundraising can border on the lines of working a full time job in addition to normal college student responsibilities.  A typical "no-frills" 15-20 game season will cost in the ball park of $15K to $20K to run, depending on number of practices and how much they pay coaches.  Kyle and Noah used “gofundmyteam” as a means by which family, friends, and other interested parties could donate money to their program.  To give you an idea of the difficulty in raising money even with a turnkey donation site, they were only able to raise about $1500 towards their $14,000 goal.  Yet all the hard work paid off as Butler played a 15 game season and a whopping 40 kids showed up to their prospect skate this past March.