UMass has a Hockey East seat waiting and no women's team to fill it

Hockey East has a women's seat with UMass's name on it, the entry fee waived, and nobody coming to sit in it. In the state that runs the Beanpot, that's not a budget footnote. It's a choice.

Neither UMass Amherst nor UMass Lowell sponsors a Division I women's team. Both have men's teams in Hockey East. And the league has already said the door is open: a new UMass women's program would join automatically, with no entry fee, because the school's men are already in.

The money, plainly

Hockey is expensive, and nobody is pretending otherwise. Top women's programs like Wisconsin and Ohio State spend more than $3 million a year. Hockey East women's programs that reported their numbers ran from about $1.5 million at Maine to about $2.9 million at Providence.

UMass Amherst spent $3,825,189 on its men's program in 2025. Its men's locker-room renovation cost $2 million in 2021, and the Mullins Center has no room left for another one. A women's team would likely need a new wing.

Ryan Bamford, the Amherst AD, said it would take "a pretty significant investment" to be nationally competitive, and that a team isn't part of the school's current strategy. Amherst has spent recent years joining the MAC and committing millions to football.

Lynn Coutts, the Lowell AD, was more open. "If it were easy, I'd be doing it," she said. Lowell finished a feasibility study last year and has proposed a practice rink at the Tsongas Center complex. Asked for a timeline, she said, "I just cannot give you a date."

What the standings say

Here's the number that should sting. Five of the 10 women's Hockey East programs are Massachusetts schools: Boston College, BU, Northeastern, Merrimack and Holy Cross. All five are private.

The state's public universities don't have a seat at that table. Meanwhile Northeastern is No. 4 in this week's USCHO women's poll at 7-1-1, and Boston College is No. 15 and leads the league table at 4-1-0. The hockey is local. The public option isn't.

The Merrimack lesson

Merrimack is the case study. Its women moved to Division I in 2015-16 as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education over a Title IX complaint. Lowell's compliance staff has already talked through the Title IX side of adding teams. It's a reminder of how these programs sometimes get built when the budget meeting keeps getting pushed.

The idea isn't new either. A trustee task force looked at it in 2007 and it stalled after 2010. Trustees raised it again in April 2023.

The W read

Lowell is the one to watch. It has a study done, a rink idea and an AD who sounds like she wants to do it. Amherst has a football bill and a full building.

My call: if either UMass school adds a women's team this decade, it's Lowell, and it'll be the practice rink that decides it, not a speech. Hockey East already set the table. Somebody just has to pay for the chairs.