Cabrini athletics explains why no hockey and football

By Devon Johnson
December 13, 2016

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Graphic by Keith Brown

Football is one of most popular sports played at the college level. It is an experience going to a Friday or Saturday game and tailgating with friends, family and maybe with other students from other schools. Especially as a time when family comes to visit their kids on homecoming, college football creates an amazing atmosphere for a family day on a college campus.

With the additions of baseball and rowing on campus, one might be wondering why Cabrini does not have hockey or football as part of the athletic program.

“Football is a massive undertaking at any institution,” David Howell, sports information director at Cabrini University, said.

Before attending Cabrini, David Howell was the information director for Rockford College, where they had their own football team and over at the school it was a huge deal.

“The amount of staffing, weight room space, locker room space, additional practice space that you would need. The additional training room space, there’s a lot of research and resources that have to go into a football team,” Howell said.

The main barrier to adding these two sports is the cost. The amount of changes needed would be too costly and would impact other sports. Howell said how adding a football field to the current turf would impact the early fall sports such as soccer and field hockey while several spring sports such as lacrosse would be unable to play on the turf whatsoever.

When it comes to finding an on-campus location for these sports Howell said, “We just wouldn’t know where to even put them.”  

Brad Koch, director of athletics and recreation, was able to give more of an explanation of why Cabrini is unable to have hockey or football as part of the athletic program.

“We do not have the facilities to accommodate either sport [stadium/field space, hockey rink],” Koch said. “Both sports require a significant amount of resources including support staff, equipment, locker room and storage space and an appropriate athletic training room; this department is not currently set up to accommodate any of those areas and provide a suitable experience for potential student-athletes. The Pavilion was put in place to service our 18 intercollegiate sports – including the two new sports, baseball and women’s rowing. That facility is not equipped to handle the roster sizes of football or hockey.”

Junior club lacrosse and roller hockey player Deqwan Phillips, a former football star at Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School, said, “Regular games felt like we had a job to do, get in and out with a win on our minds. Homecoming was about doing it for everyone who wasn’t on the field, filling everyone else with the same spark we get as soon as we touch the field and making the town light up our colors for the night.”

It has been three years since Phillips has been under those Friday night lights and he has been handling the transition by putting that passion into other sports.

“Transfer it to the sports I do play,” Phillips said. “But in terms of generating the same feeling in football, there is no way to. That’s only something who’ve played or continue to play will truly grasp.”

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Photo by Paige Wagner

 In addition to the problems of space and cost, the Colonial State Athletic Conference has no other teams in the conference with either a football or hockey team.

If Cabrini was to invest in building a football or hockey team, they would have to move to a different conference. For example, the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC), which has schools like Albright College, Misericordia University, etc. that are part of the football program in the MAC conference.

The MAC Conference separated is divided into three divisions, the MAC, MAC Commonwealth and MAC Freedom. The conference comprises 17 different teams. They are in the process of putting ice hockey as part of one of the intercollegiate sports, but only a few of the sports in the conference will have ice hockey as part of their athletics.

As much as students would love to have football and hockey teams, according to the athletic department it is just too much of project for the school to handle at the moment.

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Devon Johnson

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