This story is part two of a two-part series chronicling the history of men’s hockey at Penn. Read part one here.
Future
“I won’t lie, I did look up ‘Is Penn going to return to D-I hockey?’ because I saw some articles where they were planning on it,” rising Wharton senior Chris Bugliosi said. “It looked like COVID happened and momentum stopped.”
In 2017, then-Penn men’s club hockey president Rolando Bonachea co-authored a document called “Vision 2025” with 1985 Wharton graduate and then-chairman of the Penn Hockey Alumni Board Stu Siegel as a “potential athletic corollary to President Gutmann’s Penn Compact 2020.” The Quakers had improved significantly since they joined the Colonial States College Hockey Conference just two seasons prior, making it to their first CSCHC semifinals off a 13-5 season.
Bonachea and Siegel’s eight-page slide deck outlined an ambitious plan for the program to transition from an American Collegiate Hockey Association Division II club program to an NCAA Division I varsity program in less than a decade, by the end of the 2025-26 season. A women’s program would also be supported to maintain a balance of gendered sports in accordance with Title IX. According to the slide deck, this was likely to happen before the men’s side became an NCAA team due to the rising popularity of women’s hockey at the youth level.
Vision 2025 never saw the success Siegel, Bonachea, and the rest of the Quaker hockey alumni were hoping for. Siegel can name a number of reasons — including a leadership change in Penn’s Athletics Department and the COVID-19 pandemic — for their struggles. But at the center of it all stands the issue of fundraising.
“It’s always been a chicken and an egg situation,” Siegel explained. “There are some donors who are willing to come in and help make that happen, but they want to know the University is committed to it, especially given the history.”
He added that he “never found that kind of donor who was willing to put up the money.”
“The program has been trying to solidify and establish a path with fundraising and advancement,” 2026 College graduate A.J. Moshyedi, who was also president of Penn men’s club hockey, said. “I don’t think the administration has given a one-off number for a donation or whatever funding figure we need for them to give the green light.”
In 2017, Penn men’s club hockey had an $85,000 operating budget — roughly half of which was spent on ice time — and players were required to spend $1,000 on dues every season. This arrangement allowed the program to survive and progress to competitive club play, but in order to get to the next level, the budget would have to be increased thirtyfold.
Bonachea and Siegel devised a funding goal north of $50 million. One of the main concerns was the arena the team would play in — the Class of 1923 Arena was not suitable for D-I competition and would need extensive repairs. To fully flesh out a varsity program, Penn men’s hockey would also demand a minimum of “8 recruits per year for 3-4 years using the same admissions criteria that the current Varsity coaches are entitled to,” according to Vision 2025.
During the 2016-17 admissions cycle, 31 prospective applicants expressed interest in joining the program. By the time Vision 2025 was published in the winter of 2017, only one applicant had gained admission to Penn during the early decision round, while three were deferred and six rejected. It was nearly impossible to create an elite-level program, even at the club level, when barely any interested players were getting into Penn.
Another concern was diversity — hockey’s “traditional popularity base is among white, middle/upper class males in the Northeast and Midwest,” according to Siegel and Bonachea’s slide deck. Although the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation — founded by the late Ed Snider, the former owner of the holding company of the Philadelphia Flyers — had a strong presence at the Class of 1923 Arena, hockey wasn’t played much by West Philadelphia youth.
Snider was deeply invested in the Philadelphia hockey community while he was alive. His son, Jay Snider, was even a walk-on third-string goalie for the Quakers’ final varsity team during the 1977-78 season.
In February 2019, Snider Hockey entered an agreement with the University to upgrade the Class of 1923 Arena into a four-season sporting venue, with the foundation putting up over $7 million in bundled donations to refurbish the Red and Blue’s rink. Before the renovations, the arena could only be used from November to March.
Although a refurbished rink would do wonders for Penn club hockey, the agreement had a caveat — Snider Hockey would host a daily after-school program at the rink, while simultaneously relocating many programs to the Class of 1923 Arena. Because Snider Hockey put up most of the funding, they would get preferential treatment when it came to practice time and game slots, leaving both Penn and Drexel club hockey limited.
“We have to rent the locker room there from the rink, from the University. We rent our ice, and there is very limited practice facility time,” Penn club hockey coach Daniel Harkins said. “So our practice times are Monday morning at 7 a.m. and on Wednesday evenings at 9 p.m. And those are the only two practice slots we have.”
For games, the men’s and women’s teams have two back-to-back slots on Friday evenings. The lack of ice time is noticeable on both teams’ 2025-26 schedules, where most of the home games are between September and November — when Snider Hockey is less active at the Class of 1923 Arena. Penn men’s club hockey only had one home game from December to February during the 2025-26 season, while the women had three home games.
Although Vision 2025 never became reality, alumni are still hopeful that the program will return to the D-I level.
At the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics, the United States took home gold medals in both men’s and women’s hockey, marking the first time in Olympic history that the U.S. claimed a dual hockey gold. It was also the U.S. men’s team’s first Olympic gold medal since the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980.
After the Olympics, a renewed enthusiasm for hockey was in the air. Two of the most popular TV shows of the past year, “Heated Rivalry” and “Off Campus,” have introduced hockey to broader pop culture. It’s hard to imagine a better time to reopen conversations about a varsity team — a sentiment Penn hockey alumni share.
“Philly is a great hockey town with the Flyers,” Thomas Cullity, a player on Penn’s last varsity hockey team, said. "I think the sport has grown so much with a recent gold medal by both the women’s and the men’s team.”
He continued that “it would be great if they could somehow bring that program back and be part of Division I again.”
In the meantime, Penn hockey alumni come together for yearly reunions at Homecoming, when the club team organizes a large event for both varsity and club Quaker hockey players.
“I’ve gone through many Homecomings and so forth, where we all get together with reunions. I’ve enjoyed the seamlessness of the varsity guys and the club guys,” 1981 Wharton graduate Tom Bruch, who was also a member of the last varsity team, said. Bruch stayed at Penn after the varsity team was discontinued and helped start the club teams.
“[The alumni are] always willing to offer their help and … financial support to the club, in order to keep things going and really uphold a lot of traditions,” Harkins said.
Aside from hopes for the future, what echoes across interviews with Penn hockey players, past and present, is an appreciation for the people that the sport brought into their lives.
“We all talk at times. We all do some emails at times,” Cullity said. “I mean, I can call any one of those guys at any time and pick up like we never left.”
