Ice Hockey Story

 Arcadia University, a small college located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, is adding another varsity sport to its selection. The school announced recently that they will be adding ice hockey for both men and women. Ice hockey will join approximately twenty other sports that are offered at the university, including the newly added eSports team. Bringing ice hockey to Arcadia University will offer new experiences for current future students, as well as opening up an opportunity for high school hockey players looking to compete at the division three level. 

Starting in 2021-22, students at Arcadia will be able to lace up their skates and hit the ice for the first time in school history. They will join only a few other division three schools in Pennsylvania to offer both men and women ice hockey. With a new sport comes the excitement from both current Arcadia students, and also future college hockey players looking to continue their hockey career. Bringing in both a men and women ice hockey team will require a lot of work for the university in terms of constructing the team and finding a rink for them to play. Thanks to an agreement with Hatfield Ice in Colmar, both teams will use this facility to practice and play their games. The arena is also scheduled to  undergo a renovation which will add locker rooms, coaching offices, and more hockey arena essentials. The estimated completion for this remodel will be in the summer of 2021. 

Arcadia has found a coach for both the men and women teams. Coaching the men will be Vince Pietrangelo. Pietrangelo has a history of being an assistant coach with multiple other universities which include three seasons with SUNY Canton, and one season with the school he graduated from, Ferris University. His resume as a player included playing defense for Finlandia University, and was the second overall draft pick in the CSHL draft, where he was selected by the Metro Jets in 2009. Academically, Pietrangelo graduated from Ferris University with a bachelor of science in healthcare administration in 2015. Pietrangelo brings a vast amount of hockey knowledge and experience to the Arcada University men's team as they begin their inaugural season in the fall of 2021. 

Leading the women will be Kelsey Koelzer, who was hired in September of 2019. Koelzer also has a lot of great experience in both playing and coaching hockey, and seems to be a great selection for the women's team. She helped coach the Princeton hockey youth programs, and in 2017 she worked with the National Collegiate Development Program. Perhaps the most impressive part of her resume is that she is also a member of the NHL/NHLPA Female Hockey Advisory Committee, a program to help promote female hockey in North America. As for her playing career, Koelzer played division one at Princeton University where she was a First-team All-Ivy League honoree three different times. The United States National Women’s Ice Hockey U22 team also selected her, and she participated in the US Olympic tryouts a year later. Drafted first overall by the Metropolitan Riveters in 2016 in the NWHL draft, Koelzer became the first African American selected in the NWHL. In 2018, she led Metropolitan to an Isobel Cup championship. She also was named Co-MVP of the NWHL All-Star game. Academically, Koelzer graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. 

With the two hired coaches, Arcadia University ice hockey seems to be off to a great start and has generated a lot of excitement for current students. The teams have already started their recruiting process for the players, and it will be an exciting time over the next year as the program finds players to make up their teams. Arcadia University athletic director Brian Granata provides insight on the process of bringing ice hockey to Arcadia. 

"For many institutions, Athletics serves a multitude of purposes on campus - from providing participating opportunities and enhancing school spirit to driving enrollment.  At Arcadia, we looked at men's and women's ice hockey as a potential high impact opportunity that could diversify our sport offerings while aiding in attracting new students to the university. Our exploration started as a means to support the growth of men's and women's ice hockey at our conference level. From there, we looked into viable ice rinks in the area. After further realizing the limited collegiate playing opportunities in the region, we decided that ice hockey could be a unique market for Arcadia to venture into.

Our programs are set to begin competing in the fall of 2021. We have hired both head coaches - Kelsey Koelzer is the women's coach and Vincent Pietrangelo is the men's coach. Both are actively recruiting new students to the university in hopes of fielding a competitive program from day one. Our goal is to have 25 men in the program during the first year and eventually grow the roster to 30 players. The women's program is shooting for 18-20 players for year one and 25 student-athletes for its second season.

The teams will use Hatfield Ice Arena as their home rink. We are in the process of doing a facility renovation to the space to add locker rooms, offices, and related amenities to support our programs."

-Brian Granata