It was 1978 and Penn varsity ice hockey coach Robert Finke was sitting at his desk just like he had every other day during his tenure as the Quakers coach. The team had five games remaining in its 1977-78 season -- Finke's second behind the Penn bench. And when Daily Pennsylvanian sports editor Dan Rosenbaum dropped by his office, Finke did not think anything of it at first.
"A reporter ... showed up in my office one day and said, 'I heard that the University is thinking of shutting down the program,'" Finke recalled.
Unbeknown to Finke, his assistant coaches or the 20 or so players, the University had approved a series of cuts to its athletic department terminating four varsity programs, including men's ice hockey.
Helpless at the hands of the University's Athletic Department, Finke had no choice but to motivate a disappointed squad to finish its season -- the last season that a varsity team would skate at Penn. But the sting of the announcement -- and the backhanded way the University presented their decision -- remained.
"We felt really betrayed," Finke said. "Frankly, I had not had the intention of being a coach; the only place I was going to coach was Penn because I believed in the school."
Finke's pride in Penn surfaced during his time as coach; however, it began many years earlier, when he skated for the Red and Blue. But Finke could only watch as the University abruptly and harshly dismantled the program that he had helped build.
Support and cries of injustice burst forth from the student body following the announcement of the budget cuts. Dissent emerged from all corners of the University, including supporters of the gymnastics, badminton, and golf programs and a professional theatre at Annenberg, which were to be cut along with the hockey program.
The Undergraduate Assembly organized a rally, after which students stormed College Hall in protest. One hour of demonstration turned into a four-day sit-in, which resulted in a compromise between students and administrators.
The administration agreed to cut $50,000 from other parts of the University in order to reinstate the golf, badminton and gymnastics programs. Both students and the administration agreed to begin a campaign to raise $125,000 to keep the doors of Annenberg's professional theatre open. The University also agreed to support a year-long trial program that would oversee the addition of one voting faculty member and one voting undergraduate to the Board of Trustees.
Despite these concessions, it seemed as though the students were not content with the agreement, which omitted the reinstatement of varsity ice hockey. Team captain Marc Odette assuaged that lingering dissent, however, when he delivered two speeches to the crowd. Although his situation could not be helped, Odette urged the students to reach an agreement, noting that the demonstration had already accomplished many of the protesters' goals.
So, despite valiant efforts from students, the fate of varsity ice hockey at Penn was sealed, leaving supporters with only the memories of the program's brief existence.
The University's history with ice hockey began late in the nineteenth century; the school first participated in intercollegiate varsity hockey in 1890. Penn competed until their 1929-30 season, after which the program disappeared for almost 35 years. In 1964, though, a fresh face emerged to build a new team.
Though barely a college graduate himself, James Salfi assumed the role as head coach of the Penn men's club team in the fall of 1964.
"We had a very successful year my first year, and then we became a varsity team," Salfi said. "We went Division I the following year. There were 17 Division I teams at that time, and we scheduled the Ivy League within that. We had to play each team twice.
"Our first year [playing varsity] we upset Dartmouth, which was a perennial power, but we knew we were going to struggle because the freshmen couldn't yet play varsity. We went one whole year without them, so we took a pounding that year. But we had a really good freshman class, so after that we just took off."
For the next five years, Salfi worked to mold Penn's program through rigorous recruiting. In 1970 the Class of 1923 Ice Rink opened, providing the team with a brand new home on campus. In the 1971-72 season, Salfi led his team to a 16-9 record.
After the 1971-72 season, Salfi left his position at Penn, and the team began a new era under the reign of head coach Robert Crocker, who would head the program for four seasons before handing the team to Finke.
"The program was on the upswing. It was getting much better" said David Akre, who was a freshman on Penn's last ice hockey team.
Akre added that "there was zero indication" that the University was considering cutting the program. When the Penn Athletic Department transferred power to a new director, though, the tide began to turn.
"Penn got a new athletic director [Andy Geiger], a basketball man," Salfi said. "He was all revved up about basketball.
"When we played a single game in the ice rink we packed the place, but when Penn played [basketball] in the Palestra they had only about 1,000 people."
According to Salfi, Philadelphia's Big 5 basketball schedule, then in its prime, also consumed much of Geiger's attention after he arrived in 1975.
In 1976, Finke began coaching at Penn. He worked tirelessly to improve and sculpt the program before his coaching days were terminated prematurely.
"We beat Harvard and tied Brown; we had turned a corner with a lot of younger players. We had a couple of kids committed to coming to play at Penn. I'm not going to say that Penn was going to be a national championship contender, but Penn was on the way to building a real program," Finke said. "A lot of other sports -- lacrosse, soccer -- have years of ups and downs and that was where our team was on its way to be."
Then, in the midst of the development, news of the program's end surfaced, leaving players and coaches to assemble the pieces of a confusing and distressing move by the University.
According to Akre, just prior to the Athletic Department's decision to terminate the ice hockey program, the University had approved cuts to an academic program.
"Professors were very upset that an academic program had been cut without athletics being cut to the same extent," Akre said. "So gymnastics, [badminton], golf -- basically all the sports with the biggest budget -- were cut. But hockey equipment is very expensive, much more expensive, and travel was also expensive."
Even now, though, the reasons for the program's ending seem to fade into the background for the players and coaches. The sting of discovering the University's decision and the fate of Penn's varsity ice hockey program in such a devious way resonates most clearly.
"The worst part of the whole thing was how everyone found out. The way it was handled was totally backhanded and unprofessional," Akre said. "The whole situation was handled poorly ... The way it was handled really upset everyone involved. They could have done it without upsetting all these people."
Though the University now boasts ice hockey clubs for men and women, students and alumni still grieve over the absence of a varsity program.
"Personally, I consider the absence of a varsity team a large issue here at the University of Pennsylvania," said senior Micah Cohen, captain of Penn's ice hockey club team.
"However, in general, I don't think too many people are stressing about it ... There just seems to be no financial commitment to any sort of resurrection ... Many of our alumni are still upset about the cancellation of the program here at Penn after they were recruited, so they are hesitant to donate to our club cause. Club hockey in itself is very expensive. I don't know where the funding would come from for a varsity team."
Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky declined to offer specifics about the possibility of the University reinstating a varsity ice hockey program. However, Bilsky did confirm that the sport's absence is not currently on the department's list of priorities.
"The ice hockey program was discontinued over 20 years ago so I'm not the best source for the reasons," Bilsky said. "But right now we're all putting all our energies into our existing intercollegiate programs. We certainly can't predict the future, but the resurgence of a program at Penn is not in the present plans."
Salfi, for one, demonstrates confidence in Penn's potential as a competitor if Ivy League ice hockey was to return.
"If they had a men's varsity team and they marketed it correctly, they could fill up the [Class of 1923 Ice Rink]," Salfi said. "It is crazy that Penn does not have a team. Even though there is a diverse curriculum and student body, you still have a lot of kids from areas that love hockey ... I just cannot see how a school like Penn cannot have hockey. You have a ready-made league ... you have a rink on campus. It is absolutely stupid not to have a varsity hockey team."
The reasons for reinstating a varsity program extend beyond the convenience and common sense of such an addition, though. For Finke, a varsity ice hockey program offers valuable assets for the University by adding a new type of diversity.
"Except for the hockey team, there wouldn't have been kids from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Alberta, Canada, even Minneapolis," Finke said. "That brought a different type of feeling to the campus, too."
Finke's observations should hold special importance at a school such as Penn that takes pride in its diversity. Until the University supports the reinstatement of a varsity ice hockey program, though, Red and Blue fans will have to accept the missing link in their repertoire of Quakers sports to which they pledge long-lasting devotion.
