BYU might be getting its hockey team back.
After a five-year hiatus, the BYU Hockey Instagram account posted a story Wednesday evening with two frames. The first reads, “Did you miss us? Because we missed you.” And the second said, “Big announcement coming tomorrow.”
The team was disbanded following the 2021-22 season after successfully competing since 1996 — first as a non-official team and later as an affiliate of the school.
BYU Student Life Vice President Julie Franklin said the following in a 2021 email to team officials, which the team later published in a four-page document:
“Students have a wide variety of interests. The university is able to facilitate involvement in some of those, but not all. For several reasons, including Title IX constraints, the university has chosen to not sponsor its own ice hockey team. We also believe it is not helpful to the university to be engaged in an arrangement with a group that is not officially sponsored by the university. In consultation with other administrators on campus, I have determined it is now time to make a change.”
The hockey team said in the document that it was willing to work with the school to find solutions to satisfy all concerns, but Franklin responded that the school was “not in a position to have a negotiation.”
BYU’s hockey team was a member of the American Collegiate Hockey Association, a club hockey league with programs across the United States and Canada. Several other Utah-based schools have ACHA teams, including the University of Utah, Utah State, UVU and Weber State.