The State of the Game – A split rivalry: Weber State Hockey
Editor’s note: This is part one in a three-part series on Utah’s collegiate hockey programs.
At the end of the 2002 hockey season, all was normal. Weber State and Utah State were Division-II powerhouses while BYU and Utah brought up the rear in Utah college hockey.
Then it all changed.
Weber State split its program into a Division-I team and a Division-II team, Utah cut its hockey program altogether and BYU actually beat Utah State.
Although it has been over a year now, the dust is still settling. And there are just as many questions now as there were before for Weber State.
The Wildcats’ D-II team took a dismal 12th in the West Region last season, an un-heard-of finish for a team that was a regular at the national tournament and took second in the country in 2001. But its D-I team finished seventh in the country in its inaugural season.
D-I head coach Rob Larson said he was not surprised with the high ranking, because the Cats were already playing at that level before the split.
“We felt like it was time [to make the jump to D-I],” he said. “We felt like at the D-II level, we weren’t getting the kind of competition that we were necessarily looking for. We felt like we were recruiting players a higher level.”
The fact that Weber State started fielding a D-I team didn’t surprise anyone. But, still competing at the D-II level raised some eyebrows.
“We knew we had a lot of players that wanted to play so we couldn’t accommodate all of them for D-I,” Wildcat Eric Slaughter said.
Slaughter played for both the D-I and the D-II team last season. He said he did not enjoy playing on the lower-division team.
“We weren’t winning at all, and there was no real team at the time,” he said. “I enjoy playing with [D-I] a lot more.”
The D-II team seemed to fill more of a junior varsity role to the D-I team last season, as the two squads practiced together and players like Slaughter were moved up and down.
D-II captain Chase Tanneberg said the practices were separated this season and no one will be moving up or down after the season starts to make it easier on both teams.
“We made a rule this year that we can’t bring players up and down,” he said. “They’re that team and we’re this team. So it’s almost like we’re two separate programs.”
Separate indeed. The two teams scrimmaged once at the beginning of the season and will not face each other again this year. The D-I team, however, scheduled seven games against D-II USU.
“Actually, every time we play them it’s always a big rivalry,” Wildcat Erik Milliron, who plays for the D-I squad, said. “Especially when we play up there. They always come to play. They’ve got their fan base.”
“We always pump up for those games,” Slaughter said. “We love them. We love getting in front of all the fans up there and them yelling at us the whole time.”
The Aggies tend to play better at home against the Wildcats. Earlier this year, the D-I squad beat USU 13-1 in Ogden, but the two teams were tied going into the third period a week later in North Logan.
Larson said that despite the division gap, he does not feel like USU is not as competitive.
“We’ve been to both national tournaments and if you look at the bottom teams that are making the national tournament at the D-I level and the top D-II teams then the D-II teams are probably better than those teams,” he said.
USU finished third in the West Region last season and 12th in the country for D-II.
Larson said he feels like USU could make the jump to D-I without many problems. The biggest issue for the Aggies going to D-I is the additional recruiting that would be required to compete at that level, but Larson said that USU can handle it.
“We feel like Utah State definitely has the facilities and the program where, if they wanted to go the D-I level, their recruiting would definitely improve,” he said. “We feel like them and the Colorado schools that are, quite frankly, D-I caliber teams.”
Meanwhile, the Wildcat D-II team continues to struggle. Coming into this weekend, it has an 0-6 record and has been outscored 60-16. But, just the fact that they are playing is an accomplishment in itself.
“We had to fight for it this year to even get it back,” D-II head coach Sean Boyle said. “They were saying that they were going to cancel the D-II program.”
Now that the team has cleared that first hurdle, they must now find a way to start competing with a young, inexperienced roster.
“I think we’ll click together as a team,” Tanneberg said. “It’s kind of starting to mesh a little better now. Our rookies are getting a little more experience. So, I’ll think we’ll have a better rest of the year.”
Boyle remains optimistic about the future of his team.
“Right now it’s on its way up,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. And we’ve started recruiting already to try to bring in some more quality players next year.”
Boyle said that having a D-I school on the same campus helps his recruiting efforts.
“We’ve got that extra, added perk to say ‘come play for the D-II team for a season,'” he said. “We’ve got our D-I team. If you do well for us, then you can move right into the D-I slot.”
Tanneberg said recruiting players isn’t nearly as hard as it is to recruit fans.
“If the fans are going to go to a hockey game and pay a couple of bucks then they’re going to go to D-I games just like a varsity/JV teams in high school,” he said.
Tanneberg said there is no need for fans to have to choose between the two Wildcat teams because one is normally on the road while the other is playing at home.
“We never want to compete with our D-I team to get their fans,” he said. “True hockey fans will be here both ways.”
Despite its D-I status, Slaughter said WSU has a harder time getting fans than USU and BYU.
“Those schools are real universities,” he said. “Weber State is like the biggest community college around. The students don’t care as much.”
But both teams still care and hope that they will improve. The D-I team is ranked seventh in the country this season and the D-II will face its first real challenge this weekend against USU.
“We’ll see what happens,” Boyle said. “We’ll go out there and give it an honest shot and at the end of the game we’ll shake their hands and I’ll tell [USU Head Coach] Jerry [Crossley] ‘good game.'”
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu
Brandon Lange, of USU, tries to stop a WSU player during the Aggies´ 14-1 loss to Weber State in Ogden on Sept. 23. (Photo by John Zsiray)