On Monday, the Northeast-10 announced “enhancements” to its men’s programs, in a news release.<\/p>\n
Beginning with the 2017-18 season, the NE-10 regular-season schedule is expanding to 18 games with the addition of scheduling partner Post, which joins the conference as a scheduling partner for the regular season only. With Post’s inclusion on the schedule, each team will play a three-game series against each of the other six institutions. <\/p>\n
“Our six member institutions with ice hockey have a rich history of sponsoring the sport,” NE-10 commissioner Julie Ruppert said in a statement. “It is important to our membership, and to the full conference, that the NE-10 do whatever it can to support and advocate on behalf of its membership. The expansion of the regular-season schedule to include Post and be comprised of a an equal 18-game round robin schedule will provide our teams with the security of knowing they have the majority of their games in place with their D-II brethren.”<\/p>\n
Additionally, in Oct. 2016 the NE-10, with the full cooperation and support of its men’s member institutions, “successfully navigated the NCAA governance process to secure a change to NCAA D-II pre-enrollment legislation for ice hockey that addressed one major recruiting disparity for the programs relative to Division III and Division I. This legislative change enables NE-10 members to recruit all prospective student-athletes from the junior hockey ranks in full alignment with their NCAA D-I and D-III peers,” according to the news release.<\/p>\n
Prior to October, prospective student-athletes who had participated in a full junior hockey experience had to sit out a year from participation and they lost a season of competition if they chose to attend an NE-10 institution with D-II hockey. With the change that will be effective with the 2017-18 entering classes, all prospective hockey student-athletes who participate in three years of junior hockey can now choose an NE-10 program and have their full four-year playing career available to them immediately upon enrollment, noted the release.<\/p>\n
“We are very pleased that our membership’s efforts to amend this NCAA legislation was successful,” added Ruppert. “Our Division II ice hockey programs deserve the same equal opportunity to recruit student-athletes and fill their class as their D-I and D-III peers do. The previous disadvantages were growing increasingly difficult to manage in an environment where their peers were using negative recruiting tactics surrounding the loss of a year of eligibility. These young men are great fits at our D-II member institutions and it is great news that they are now given the same opportunity to compete for four years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Monday, the Northeast-10 announced “enhancements” to its men’s programs, in a news release. Beginning with the 2017-18 season, the NE-10 regular-season schedule is expanding to 18 games with the addition of scheduling partner Post, which joins the conference as a scheduling partner for the regular season only. With Post’s inclusion on the schedule, each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n