PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 100.1 FM and AM 1020 KDKA) – Former Robert Morris University hockey alum and USA Olympic Hockey Team Coach Brianne McLaughlin spoke with KDKA Radio’s Rick Dayton about RMU’s decision to end the school’s men’s and women’s hockey programs.
McLaughlin, who is currently in Minnesota for the Olympic Trials, said that this announcement has been all the hockey community can talk about over the past few days, and that RMU’s decision has left everyone feeling “crushed”.
Even those who did not go to Robert Morris “know what a loss [this] is for college hockey and hockey, in general, to no longer having those teams competing,” McLaughlin said.
“It’s been a hard week because there hasn’t really been any communication up to about an hour ago, as to what those reasons were,” she continued.
On Tuesday, RMU’s University President Chris Howard spoke about the decision to cancel its men’s and women’s hockey programs, calling it a painful decision.
"We've had little choice. I know this decision came as a painful surprise to the student athletes and many other members of our community," explained Howard. "Over the past several years, RMU - like other schools - has had to make some difficult, strategic operational and financial decisions."
He explained that hockey was the most expensive Division I sport, and the ticket sales and donations were not where they needed to be in order to continue the teams. Howard said sustaining the men’s and women’s teams long-term would "require approximately $5 million to $30 million in facility upgrades with no guarantee of attracting the kind of corporate support needed to secure that investment."
McLaughlin said she had expected to hear that the financial costs was the reason for the decision.
“What was disappointing about that was that I wish we would have heard that before…’Hey hockey is in trouble financially, what can we do?” because being on that side of it now, in under a week, we were able to raise a significant amount of funds.”
“I did hear him say he had exhausted all options on how to save this program but I wish I would have heard what those options were because we have been able to solve a decent amount of those in the time we have had so far.”
McLaughlin praised her experience as a hockey player at Robert Morris University, saying she had “such a better experience coming from a small school.”
“We got to start the programs—we were not good,” McLaughlin said with a laugh. “Our contribution to Robert Morris hockey was laying that foundation to be successful in the future. It’s been such a joy watching that happen, on both the men and women’s side of the championships. What they do for the community…it’s been awesome to watch. I think everyone who puts that jersey on feels that, so when we heard the news, it was not surprising that everybody just jumped right in. “What can we do? How can we help? And how do we get this team back?”
RMU said they were standing by their decision to end the programs, and that they do not have any specific plans on bringing the programs back.