Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Huntsville coming with good news

Don't bury the Alabama Huntsville Chargers just yet. On the eve of their trip to Mankato for this weekend's nonconference series against Minnesota State, the program just might have been saved, according to The Huntsville Times.

Plans have not been put in place, but after a Tuesday meeting, school officials announced:
"Members of The University of Alabama in Huntsville administration met this evening with hockey supporters, following discussions with Chancellor Malcolm Portera, and came to a consensus to work closely together to pursue institutional and community support to continue UAH hockey at the Division I level.
"Several scenarios were discussed to ensure recurring support is in place, and the two groups will continue to meet in the coming days to finalize a workable plan."
This comes nearly two months after it was announced that the team would be dismantled as an NCAA Division I program after this season be reverted to club status. However, there has been a grass-roots effort to save the program, and the group says it has raised $500,000 in pledges, according to the Times' story.

It will be interesting to see what happens going forward, as Chargers players have already begun looking into transferring (it was reported earlier this week that goalie Clarke Saunders is headed to North Dakota), and the issue of remaining an independent program amid all of the upcoming conference changes has yet to be resolved (the WCHA could use a 10th team, no?).

Huntsville and MSU will play on Friday and Saturday at the Verizon Wireless Center.

3 comments:

crossjcek said...

Wish we could keep them but don't see it happening, they were left for dead by all and I don't think they can come back if no conference will add them. UND starts the death of the WCHA and gets a goalie in the process, guess that deal with the devil is working out to some degree after a horrible start to the year on the ice. (that's a joke UND nuts)...

Sam said...

On an unrelated note, the preliminary roster for the Latvian World Junior Championship team has been released. As expected, Teddy Blueger is viewed as one of the top prospects on the team. Both he and Minnesota State got a shout-out on this NHL.com article:

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=605237

hockeyfan said...

Shane injury report on Stern and Heath?