Tim Benz: Less than a year from returning, Robert Morris hockey programs ramping up for comeback

Robert Morris University hockey coach Derek Schooley is aware of how time is marching along. He has a countdown clock on his phone. He sees it every day.

“I believe 450 days is when I started it,” Schooley said. “It seemed like it was going to take forever. Now that school has started, now that we have athletes, now that we are on the road, getting some commitments. It seems like it is going a lot quicker. Before you know it, it’ll be Christmas time. Before you know it, it’ll be the spring, and we’ll be ready to get our athletes back on campus.”

The ticking days mark the amount of time until the 2023-24 college hockey season, now just under a year away. That’s when Schooley and women’s coach Logan Bittle will relaunch the Colonials hockey programs after they were cut in May 2021.

The coaches, players and alumni of the programs fought to get the teams restored, which eventually happened in December 2021, but not without a second year away from competition to help raise funds and reconstruct competitive programs.

Now, though, with both men’s and women’s NCAA hockey play underway for this season, for Schooley and Bittle, the concept of team building for next year is a lot more concrete. All the theoreticals are now real.

“Looking at the games last weekend, you are wishing that you were playing. But we talked with our teams this week. And we said, ‘Everything we are doing, there is a goal. And that goal is a year from today when we hop on the ice.’ They took to that well. We are definitely looking forward to the fall of ‘23,” Bittle said.

Yes, both coaches still do have a small collection of players. Neither team is starting completely from scratch. Both the men’s and women’s teams carried over three players from the last iteration of their rosters. Both teams also have three newcomers enrolled in school who are committed to waiting out the year until hockey returns to the RMU Island Sports Center.

The 12 men’s and women’s players are holding joint practices together three times a week, adopting what Bittle calls a “one-team mentality” between the genders, as had been the case between the clubs in their efforts to reinstate the programs after they were cut.

That makes getting ice time easier, and constructing practice drills more fluid. Plus, it allows Schooley and Bittle to occasionally free up one another for recruiting and fundraising duties.

“It’s been fun. It’s really forced the women out of their comfort zone and made them play harder and faster. And the goalie, Maggie Hatch, is an outstanding goalie,” Schooley said. “We just have one rule. Nobody can hit her in the head. We need her! She’s our only goalie.”

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The days remaining on Schooley’s countdown clock are ticking away fast. Time allocation for him and Bittle is key. There are a lot of balls in the air to juggle between practicing with the current players, scheduling, fundraising, recruiting trips for junior leagues and scouting current NCAA rosters on television.

For both coaches, the challenge of rebuilding the teams appears to be equal parts exciting and daunting. On the one hand, they can dole out a full roster’s worth of scholarships in one year to land as many recruits as they want.

But there’s a balancing act to that as well. As Schooley and Bittle are loading up on recruits during the year, they want to leave a certain number of slots open for experienced NCAA skaters who may want to transfer once this season ends.

Schooley said he has “29 locker stalls” available and wants to get to at least 26 players — 15 forwards, eight defensemen and three goalies. The number of transfers he has in his mind is 10. But that number is not set in stone.

“You have to be flexible within the plan,” Schooley said. “If I say I want to leave 10 transfer portal spots, I come up with a really good freshman that becomes available late, and I already have 19 players (before transfers are available), why would I pass on that kid?”

Schooley said the team is top-heavy with forwards right now and needs to start leaning toward beefing up the blue line. As far as goaltending, he said there have frequently been a lot of good goalies available in the transfer portal in recent years, and he will likely lean in that direction for 2022-23.

Whether it’s enticing recruits or transfers, part of the process is selling the prospects on the notion that the teams are back and on stable footing. Plus, encouraging them to believe that, among their options, hooking onto what amounts to the college version of an expansion team is what is best for their futures.

“You face it head-on. You answer questions before they are asked,” Bittle said. “We talk about the fact that the programs were shut down. We talk about the reasons why, and we talk about the support which is greater than ever. Once people hear that, the response is positive. It’s excitement for the fact we are back and are going to get back to competing for championships.”

That was the case before the teams were scuttled. The women’s team won the CHA and went to the NCAA Tournament. The men won the regular season title for the reconfigured western division of Atlantic Hockey during the covid year of 2020-21.

Bittle was an assistant coach on that women’s team and a player on Schooley’s men’s team when the programs were launched for the first time in 2004-05. Now they are both part of the process of doing it again. And Schooley’s countdown clock will be ticking faster every day until it hits zero.

RMU men’s hockey coach Derek Schooley and RMU women’s coach Logan Bittle talk about rebuilding the programs for the 2023-24 season.

Listen: Tim Benz talks Robert Morris hockey with coaches Derek Schooley and Logan Bittle