Welcome to Fireside Chat. My name is Megan Westcott and today I am here with:
Coach Chuck Edkins, Director of Athletics at Misericordia University.
Can you tell us a little more about what the impact will be of the men's ice hockey team at the University?
Yeah, we're very excited. This opportunity will provide young men the chance to explore a place that they may not have explored before. So the addition of ice hockey will help our with our enrollment, it helps us with sport offerings, and then also helps our conference and Middle Atlantic Conference in being able to provide an additional men's ice hockey team, which we need to shore up the conference for scheduling purposes.
Proximity to Misericordia. We will have to do some travel with this. We'll belong hopefully to the UCHC. But with the implementation of the Mac and their men's ice hockey conference, we'll be able to stay a little bit closer to home when we play some of our contests.
That's awesome. And can you tell me more about our partnership with the Penguins? We're very excited and very thankful for the opportunity to partner with the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins. Jason Jarecki has been great in working alongside and determining how we will schedule practices, our contests as well.
But the relationship has been outstanding as we've started this venture and we're excited to drop the puck in the fall of 2024. But knowing that we have a collaborative group between Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins and Misericordia, we're really excited. We couldn't be more pleased.
And being in athletics, what coaching opportunities are presented with a skating events ice hockey team?
Yeah, so now's the big push. We have posted the position. We are looking for a head men's ice hockey coach and an assistant coach most likely that will be in the form of a graduate assistant coach. And that will get us started in off the ground.
So as I said, it's been posted. We'd like to get that person on board in late spring, or early summer at the latest. We want to take advantage of the numerous recruitment opportunities. Northeast, Midwest, a little bit Mid-Atlantic states to be able to get our name out there.
Have young men who are looking to play college hockey say, "Hey look Misericordia is now an option. And let's take a look at who we are and what we are about."
That's awesome. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to having our men's ice hockey team join us in the fall of 2024. This has been Fireside Chat. Thank you for watching.
