Saint Anselm just decided a .691 all-time women’s hockey program is too expensive to keep at the level where it actually matters. That is not a conference realignment footnote. That is Division I women’s hockey losing a founding NEWHA member after the 2026-27 season while the sport is exploding everywhere else, and I refuse to pretend the press releases make it noble.
The Hawks went 19-18-1 last season, punched into the NEWHA championship game, and lost 2-0 to Franklin Pierce with a real shot at the national tournament on the other side of that night. Brooklyn Schneiderhan took home NEWHA Player of the Year and is headed to Switzerland to play pro. Katie Meehan, Kelly Golini, Schneiderhan: three Players of the Year from one program. A 2019 conference title at 25-3-1. Six championship game appearances. They have been one of the few NEWHA sides that could look you in the eye and claim a real standard. And the reward is a relegation ticket to the Little East Conference at the Division III level starting in 2027-28.
I keep circling the same ugly math. There is no NCAA Division II women’s ice hockey, so Saint Anselm’s DII athletic department had been running a legitimate DI hockey program for years. When the college announced the full jump from the Northeast-10 to NEWMAC and Division III, hockey got dragged down with everything else. Institutional logic. Athletic department spreadsheet. Mission language. None of that changes what the ice looks like next fall for the kids still wearing the sweater.
Thrilled Is a Press Release, Not a Feeling
Director of Athletics Phil Rowe said the school is “thrilled to join the Little East Conference as an affiliate member in men’s and women’s golf and men’s and women’s ice hockey.” Thrilled. That word should be illegal in this context. You do not get thrilled about taking a program with a 410-172-40 record and eight conference championships and telling it the ceiling just dropped two floors. You get strategic. You get resigned. You get administrative. Thrilled is the sound of a statement written for people who never sat through a NEWHA final.
President Joseph A. Favazza put the broader case on the table: “The NCAA landscape is changing rapidly, driven by Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) financial opportunities, an active transfer portal that leads to team instability, and growing uncertainty among conferences. After careful consideration, we have chosen a proactive path – one that aligns with our mission and allows Saint Anselm to maintain control of its athletic future.”
I hear him. NIL chaos is real. The portal is a blender. Mid-major schools are getting crushed between Power conference gravity and their own balance sheets. Choosing control over chaos is a defensible boardroom move for a Catholic, Benedictine college with more than 650 student-athletes across 23 varsity programs. Field hockey won a national title in 2024. Men’s lacrosse hit national semis. The whole department is being rebuilt around a different competitive reality.
None of that erases the specific casualty. Women’s hockey at Saint Anselm was not a money pit cosplaying as DI. It was a program that produced pros, stacked awards, and made NEWHA look less like a holding pattern. NEWHA has spent years trying to prove it belongs in the same conversation as the bigger leagues. Losing a founding member from 2017 with actual hardware is not “realignment.” It is a contraction story in a growth sport.
The Petition Already Told You Who Cares
Alumni did not wait for the spin cycle. Former player Margaret Sullivan launched a Change.org petition within hours of the April announcement. It cleared hundreds of signatures immediately, blew past 1,500 inside a week, and sat around 2,370 verified the last time I checked. WMUR ran the alumni grief. The college said the decision is final. Of course it is. Final is what institutions say when they have already done the math and decided the people who built the thing do not get a veto.
I am not naive about Division III. Plenty of great hockey gets played there. The Little East will give these athletes real games and a conference home. Eligibility for DIII championships arrives in 2029-30 after reclassification. That is a future. It is just a smaller one than the future Schneiderhan just left for Switzerland, and a smaller one than the 2019 team earned when they beat Post 5-1 for the NEWHA title.
Women’s college hockey cannot keep celebrating global boom cycles, PWHL momentum, and packed rinks while quietly accepting that a winning DI program in New Hampshire is disposable because the rest of the athletic department wants a cleaner map. Saint Anselm gets control. NEWHA gets thinner. The sport gets one fewer ladder for kids who thought Division I still had room for places that win without a Power conference zip code.
The Hawks still have 2026-27 in NEWHA. One more season at the level they earned. After that, the tradition gets packed into a smaller box and labeled excellence anyway. I will be watching who treats that like a success story. I already know it is a loss.
