Everything was going according to plan after years of hard work. Millarville's Malia Schneider was rounding out her final season at the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy already boasting the commitment to her dream NCAA women's hockey school.
Everything was going according to plan after years of hard work.
Millarville's Malia Schneider was rounding out her final season at the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy already boasting the commitment to her dream NCAA women's hockey school.
Not so fast.
“It happened over spring break and I was just laying by the pool and my parents came up to me and said Malia we have some hard news for you,” Schneider said. “They said UND decided to cut their women's hockey team and at that point that's all they knew. I was so confused. It happened three days before April 1st so I just assumed it was an April Fool's Joke.
“I guess it wasn't.”
The University of North Dakota – often thought of as the marquee NCAA hockey program — had in fact made the decision to cut its women's hockey program at the end of the 2016-17 season.
The shocking move meant the existing Fighting Hawks athletes had to look elsewhere to continue their collegiate hockey careers while future UND students were also put in a state of flux.
A movement to save the program gathered a lot of steam on social media, but wasn't able to change the tide.
“Nobody knew. The head coach called me an hour after I found out and he said he was sorry this happened to you and the other girls. If they had any idea they would have let them know,” Schneider said. “I was in such shock. I had my whole life planned out. I was going this summer, train there, go play there for four years and study for five. It was like someone took away your whole future plans and you have to start over now and you only have a few months to decide.”
Fortunately for the then Grade 12 student there were a couple irons in the fire.
Firstly, POE head coach Kris Hogg worked his contacts to get feelers for the talented forward.
“That night it happened he already talked to a few schools and contacted them for me,” she said. “He helped me mentally through it all, saying we're going to figure it out, we're going to find you a home.
“Every school I talked to I said what is your option for me? What does me being on the team look like? Where am I going to be in the lineup? Then it came down to the financial part of it. Now I had to think “wow I have to pay for all of my schooling? Those were my biggest factors.”
Additionally, Schneider's early commitment enabled her to have four fly-downs for campus visits paid for. One of those destinations, Colgate University, a quaint liberal arts school in central New York, struck a particular cord.
“I visited a lot of schools back in Grade 9 and 10, but you forget about things,” she said. “The biggest thing is I felt the (Colgate) coaches wanted me the most and cared about me the most out of all the schools. They were the most honest about everything and I also felt they would do everything to get me and made sure I knew everything before committing.
“Before I committed to North Dakota it was actually down to Colgate and North Dakota. I already knew I really liked it and it was actually my favourite campus.”
Colgate is also a rising power in NCAA Division I women's hockey.
The Raiders are coming off their best two seasons in program history with 22 wins in the Eastern College Athletic Conference.
Schneider begins her collegiate hockey career in the fall. Colgate opens its regular season on Oct. 6 versus St. Cloud State.
The disappointment still lingers, but she's ready to turn the page with the Raiders while balancing the busy workload of a student-athlete as an economics major.
“It's definitely still a sore spot,” she said. “I committed there in Grade 11 and have been planning on it a while, but I've just been focusing on Colgate to go in there and make sure I know everything I can and train just as hard as I would for North Dakota for Colgate. I'm going to go in and do the best I possibly can.”
