When the NESCAC winter sports season kicks off every year, Tufts proudly displays 10 varsity teams, including basketball, swimming and diving, track and field, men's ice hockey, squash and fencing. But there remains one conspicuous absence in the Jumbos' winter team lineup: Tufts does not field a varsity women's ice hockey team.
Tufts and Bates are the only schools out of the 11 NESCAC members without a women's team, although the Bobcats lack a varsity men's hockey team as well.
"It's frustrating for me because to me women's ice hockey is an up-and-coming sport," Tufts Director of Athletics Bill Gehling said. "Fifteen years ago there was hardly any women's ice hockey, and now it's growing, and it's certainly a sport that I think I would love to have if we could accommodate it, but at this point in time it's hard to see how we could accommodate it."
According to Gehling, the biggest obstacle to starting a team is the lack of facilities.
"Basically, what it really comes down to is the simple fact that we don't own a rink," Gehling said. "If we had a rink, my guess is that we would absolutely have a women's ice hockey team.
"Over the past few years we've explored a couple of different options for the potential of joint ownership arrangements [of a rink] off campus, but nothing has materialized," he continued. "Right now, there's nothing solid in the works, and certainly no plans for building a rink on campus."
While the absence of a Tufts-owned rink has precluded the addition of a women's team, it has also been a problem for the men's team in terms of practice time, fan base and recruiting draw.
"Not having a rink has made it a real challenge to have a men's team," Gehling said. "If you look at the history of the men's team over many, many years, it's gone in and out of varsity status, in part because of rink problems throughout the years. We finally have a stable rink situation where I feel like we can run the men's program reasonably well, but it's far from ideal."
Bates has its own rink on campus but, according to Director of Athletics Dana Mulholland, offers neither men's nor women's hockey for reasons different from those given by Gehling.
"We do support hockey at the club level, but I think more than anything it's because we already support 32 varsity teams, and it would be difficult to add more at this point," Mulholland said.
While the majority of sports offered at Tufts have both men's and women's squads, supporting a sport for one gender does not necessarily mean a corresponding team for the other. The interpretation of Title IX, the federal legislation passed in 1972 that mandated equal playing opportunities for both sexes, does not mandate a strict one-to-one ratio.
"As we've gone about trying to meet our Title IX obligations with respect to equity of opportunities for men's and women's sports, we've looked to add women's sports, but you don't automatically add a women's sport in every sport you have men's," Gehling said. "The issue is trying to provide an equitable amount of participation opportunities, and we've done that."
Ashley Ocampo, a junior at the University of Santa Barbara who transferred from Tufts after her sophomore year, arrived in Medford as a committed hockey player but was aware of the nonexistence of a women's varsity team before enrolling. She subsequently decided to compete on Tufts' co-ed club ice hockey team, where she was the only female.
"Before I applied to Tufts, I already knew they didn't have a team," Ocampo said. "I remember when I went on the tour they said I could start my own team, but I figured it might take a while for that to actually happen, so at that point I just started to look at the club hockey team because that was the closest thing I could do to keep playing."
Ocampo never approached the Athletics Department about starting a varsity women's team, and Gehling likewise said there has been little movement from the student body with regard to forming a team.
"I remember a few years ago one person coming and talking to me about it, but there hasn't been a significant wave of inquiry," Gehling said.
Ocampo does not believe the transportation issues currently associated with the men's squad are a sufficient rationale for the lack of a women's team.
"I don't think it's a good enough reason," she said. "The rink actually isn't far away at all. I've been [to the Malden rink] before because the club hockey team plays out of there, and driving there takes literally five minutes. If they can bus the boys over there then it shouldn't be that big of a deal for the girls to get over there."
Ocampo also said that Tufts' standing compared to other NESCAC schools should translate into having a women's hockey team.
"[Almost] all the other Div. III schools have girl's hockey, and Tufts is one of the biggest schools in the NESCAC," she said. "I really don't see how it would be that big of a problem. We pay the same tuition as all the other schools, so I really don't see it as a legitimate excuse."
Gehling acknowledged that transporting teams was an issue, but rink ownership has proven to be the bigger obstacle.
"Obviously transport is an issue, [but] larger issues have to do with being able to control the access to the rink at the times that you want it and need it," Gehling said. "That's probably the biggest issue - lack of control from the standpoint of scheduling, from the standpoint of getting the hours that you need, which is not easy to do because everyone wants the rink at similar times."
