The 2015-16 Union College women’s hockey team won zero games. It was the 13th consecutive season the Dutchwomen failed to qualify for their conference tournament. Under head coach Claudia Asano Barcomb, Union won nine conference games — in nine years.

As the winless season came to a close, Union director of athletics Jim McLaughlin announced Barcomb would return for a 10th year.

“It was clear,” former Schenectady-based Daily Gazette reporter Mark McGuire said. “As long as the kids were graduating and the program wasn’t causing any external problems, the athletic department did not care.”

McGuire wrote a column in 2016 questioning McLaughlin and Union’s decision. It was a hockey story, he wrote, but it was “much, much more.” It highlighted a problem with the women’s college game — a problem with women’s athletics in general and its struggle for equity — that hasn’t gone away. McGuire asked if Union’s men’s team would have kept their coach with an equally poor record. “Possibly, possibly not,” McLaughlin responded.

Roshan Fernandez | Asst. Digital Editor

Data analysis by The Daily Orange found that 6.31% of men’s college hockey coaches have reached 100-games coached with a win percentage below 30%. On the women’s side, that number balloons to 18.64%, indicating that women’s coaches are held to a lower standard by their athletic departments.

“I think a lot of time in women’s programs,” SU head coach Paul Flanagan said. “Mediocrity is maybe accepted.”

Title IX, passed in 1972, was designed to impose an equality mandate for institutions that receive federal funding, Western New England University law professor and Title IX expert Erin Buzuvis said. The law wasn’t designed to fix social problems, Buzuvis said, and equal treatment lags behind. In women’s college hockey, McGuire said, the players who dedicate their lives to the sport, who deserve respect from their institutions, suffer.

Syracuse houses one of three women’s Division I teams without a male counterpart, but Flanagan said he’s seen the difference in treatment between gendered hockey programs elsewhere.

In Eric Means’ six seasons as head coach of Minnesota State’s women’s ice hockey team, the Mavericks had a win percentage of only 24.9%. Their best record under Means was 13-23-1. In 2015 — after six seasons with only one playoff victory — Means was retained by the university. Instead, he stepped down citing the team’s facility as a program handicap.

During Means’ tenure at Minnesota State, the men’s team coach, Troy Jutting, was fired despite coaching the program to an NCAA tournament and winning 45.7% of his games — 20.8% more than Means.

“It doesn’t matter what program, eventually wins (and) losses matter, especially at the Division I level,” McGuire said. “That’s why they keep score.” 

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Flanagan coached both the men’s and women’s teams at St. Lawrence University before Syracuse, and “always felt that both programs were treated equitably,” he said. But that equity is “unique to an individual institution,” he said, citing North Dakota’s now defunct women’s team as an example of treatment that “wasn’t even close.”

“I remember on the women’s side when they weren’t doing well, or just were okay, I don’t really think there was that much of a threat with the coaches to be honest with you,” Flanagan said. “I think the women’s program was just there for Title IX. Which most programs are, I mean let’s face it.”

After financial restrictions cost the Fighting Hawks their baseball team a year prior, North Dakota’s women’s hockey program was cut in 2017, with an all-time win percentage of 45.2%. The men’s program remained. Flanagan pointed to the financial realities of college sports — from 2006 to 2016, North Dakota’s women’s team brought in $12.8 million in revenue compared to the men’s team’s $42.5 million, per the Department of Education.

But because of Title IX, prioritizing programs based on revenue is forbidden. Revenue sports — teams that produce immediate revenue from ticket sales and other avenues — are more common on the men’s side.

While it is “not permissible to use a sports revenue status as a defense or an excuse for unequal treatment,” Buzuvis said, tolerance of poor performance still comes back to business.

“Would they tolerate that same performance from their men’s team? No,” Buzuvis said. “But they’re probably paying a salary commensurate with those higher expectations.”

Recently hired Minnesota men’s hockey head coach Bob Motzko will make $565,000 in 2019-20. The Gophers’ women’s head coach, Brad Frost, has a base salary of $195,000. At Ohio State, men’s head coach Steve Rohlik earns a base salary almost four-times that of women’s head coach Nadine Muzerall.

In the case of Union College — nine years with only nine conference wins — it was “clear that respect was not shown to the Dutchwomen hockey players,” McGuire said.

Roshan Fernandez | Asst. Digital Editor

Countless other factors play into a decision to hire or fire a head coach. It’s not just about wins and losses. Barcomb — who could not be reached by The D.O. for comment — said as much when she was finally let go by Union College two months after McGuire’s column.

“Is everything about winning,” Barcomb told the Times Union, “or is (it) about being great kids and being a great team?”

Teams cannot, and should not, be expected to supply identical financial resources to every team, McGuire said. But he added coaches must be held to the same standards and women’s players shouldn’t be given significantly less attention than men’s.

“You go [to a team] with the hopes and the aspirations of playing for a team that has all kinds of resources and opportunities,” Flanagan said. “If you feel that the program’s being slighted then it does affect some of the kids.”

All statistics correct as of Feb, 28, 2020

Published on March 1, 2020 at 11:19 pm

Contact Mitchell: mbannon@syr.edu