Tim Benz: Departure of women's coach Paul Colontino is latest hurdle for Robert Morris hockey

For former Robert Morris University women’s hockey coach Paul Colontino, he just couldn’t wait any longer.

No more delays. No more soft deadlines. No more uncertainty. He needed a job. And a team to coach.

More than two months after waiting for the RMU administration to tell him if either of those things were going to exist for him in Moon Township this fall, Colontino had to leave.

“As a family, you are trying to prepare for every scenario,” Colontino said during a phone call Saturday. “You are trying to create options. We’re a single income family. So I have to work, right?”

Five months after leading the Colonials to a CHA championship and a berth in the NCAA tournament, Colontino is departing from what remains of the program he has coached for a decade. He’ll become the vice president of hockey administration at Bishop Kearney Select outside of Rochester, N.Y. He’ll also be the U-19 girls head coach.

“It’s exciting. It is a different path. But the school is highly committed to what they are trying to do with the academy. They want to have the best hockey academy in North America, for boys and girls grades 9-12,” Colontino said.

Colontino is leaving because RMU officials cut both the men’s and women’s ice hockey programs on May 26. After the prospect of legal action for how administrators handled the decision, the school decided to open a window of fundraising in conjunction with the newly formed Pittsburgh College Hockey Foundation, with the goal of tracking toward a $7 million total over five years.

But after the school had initially said it would let the programs know if they had been resuscitated by an Aug. 1 deadline to file for NCAA Division I sponsorship, the university merely stated that it had received an extension to that date. Since then, it has gone dark with information as to what will happen with the teams.

For Colontino, he had a job offer waiting for him in Rochester and nothing but uncertainty left at the RMU Island Sports Center.

“You want to hold out as long as you can,” Colontino said. “Things were up in the air. You don’t want to jump on anything too quick. And you’ve got a lot of people working hard to get the program reinstated. But you have to take into account all outcomes and scenarios.”

It’s not just Colontino who is leaving. Women’s assistant coach Jen Kindret went to St. Anselm’s as the new head coach. Men’s assistant Mike Corbett is joining the staff at Quinnipiac.

By Colontino’s estimation, only about four or five women’s players remain affiliated with the Colonials program. According to a recent count from last year’s roster, roughly about a dozen on the men’s side are still linked to the university.

That’s not surprising since there are only 40 other women’s teams expected to play in Divsion I schedules in 2021. On the men’s side, it’s 60. So the transfer portal and the talent pool is deeper, thus making it easier for the men’s team to stay afloat.

That’s part of the reason why head coach Derek Schooley and some of the men’s players are holding out hope that the men’s season can be salvaged. But time is scarce.

And if the women’s team fades to the point it can’t be resurrected, that could pose a Title IX issue for the men, even if they have enough money raised to operate that program on its own.

Don’t think for a second that university president Dr. Chris Howard and those on the RMU board who have been trying to make the hockey team go away are blind to that reality. They are very much aware. It’s been a part of their stall-and-starve strategy toward eliminating both squads to save some money on the university’s bottom line.

The men’s team can’t exist without the women for Title IX compliance reasons. The women can’t exist without the profile, revenue and fundraising arm of the men’s team.

That said, when RMU launched its programs back in 2004-05, the men’s team started a year before the women did. So it wouldn’t be unprecedented for the NCAA to allow the school to reboot the programs in a similar fashion.

That’s if the administration has any desire to do so. Based on its inaction so far, it most certainly does not.

Jeffrey Kessler is one of the attorneys representing a coalition of RMU players who were considering legal action against the school prior to the temporary reprieve in July. Now that momentum toward reinstatement has appeared to stall, the legal team is once again “monitoring the situation,” Kessler told TribLIVE on Saturday.

They may need to be more proactive than that if the prospect of a legal volley is supposed to be a catalyst toward resurrection of the teams. Because if the coalition of players is getting ready to sue, it better do so quickly. Or else there won’t be teams to save.

As for Colontino, he’ll be taking fond memories with him to Rochester of the skaters he once coached.

“There have been a lot of sacrifices to get the program to where it was. There were a lot of people — coaches, players, administrators — that put so much into it. There have just been a lot of good people to go through that program,” Colontino said.

Colontino was one of them. Now the Colonials will need someone like him to get them back to where they once were.

If Howard and the board ever allow the athletic department to try in the first place.