GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) – The Gator faithful does not have to wait much longer for the Gator football season to kick off. According to Zach Abolverdi of On3 reports the Gators open up fall camp starting on July 30th.

The Gators will practice weekly on Monday through Thursday and Saturday mornings. The off days are Sundays and Fridays for the team, though there is media availability on Friday.

There are two scheduled scrimmages at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on August 9th and 16th.

The Gator football team is in search of its fourth national title for the first time since 2008.

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Stuart Hughes, a 47-year employee of RIT, succumbed to his battle with cancer on July 15, surrounded by family and friends. He was 64.

Mr. Hughes, affectionately known as Stu, was a Henrietta native who began working on the university grounds crew at the age of 18. After serving 20 years tending to RIT’s grounds, he transitioned to become the Ice Operations Manager of Frank Ritter Arena and the newer Gene Polisseni Center when it opened in 2014.

He was a fan favorite of RIT Tiger hockey fans for nearly three decades. Fans would chant “Stu!” while he maneuvered donuts in the large Zamboni after every Tiger playoff series victory.

“Stu was a fixture of our hockey community and helped make an ice rink feel like a second home for players and fans alike,” said Executive Director of Athletics Jackie Nicholson. “You couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride when you set foot in the rink and saw the flawless sheet of ice, he always had ready, just waiting to be skated on. Game nights won’t be the same without Stu.”

Mr. Hughes drove the Zamboni one final time this past season for “Support Stu Night” as he was battling cancer. Fittingly, his last official game was in March 2024, when the men’s hockey team won the Atlantic Hockey Championship.

“Stu was a great friend and co-worker from the very first day I started at RIT,” said former RIT Men’s Hockey Coach Wayne Wilson, who recently retired following 26 years leading the program. “You’d be hard pressed to find someone more meticulous about his job or take more pride in having the best ice in college hockey than Stu. There also are not many Zamboni drivers who fans know by name, but he was a big part of our program that will be missed.”

Mr. Hughes is predeceased by his mother, father, and sister, Deborah. He is survived by his by his daughter, Amanda; brother, Eric; and sisters, Sandra, Nancy, Marilyn, and Victoria.

Public calling hours will be from 3 to 7 p.m., Thursday, July 24 at the Miller Funeral Home, 3325 Winton Road South, Henrietta. The RIT flag will be lowered in his memory and honor on July 24.

 

At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and how it might affect NCAA hockey in the future.

“Hockey is behind a little bit in the conversation,” Motzko said, perhaps inadvertently quoting Minnesota music legend Bob Dylan in his answer. “I think it’s going to be a conversation that’s going to heat up more and more in hockey over the next couple of years. We just don’t have that many teams compared to football and basketball. But it’s starting to heat up. And there are more discussions. You’re hearing million-dollar deals for football and basketball. Our players get burritos. But I think times are changing.”

It’s 27 months later. And the times have changed in a big, big way.

Gavin McKenna, a Canadian forward with eye-popping offensive numbers in major junior hockey, is 17 years old and projected by many experts to be the top overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. Last week, he was reportedly offered $250,000 to attend Michigan State in the fall and skate for a Spartans team that returns one of the nation’s top goalies in Trey Augustine. The Spartans are a not-overly-risky bet to win the Big Ten’s first NCAA hockey title since an underdog Spartans team did it in 2007.

After visiting campus and mulling their official bid, McKenna handed Michigan State a polite ‘No thank you,’ and instead opted to skate for conference rival Penn State next season. That decision came after the Nittany Lions, who are coming off the program’s first Frozen Four appearance, were able to reportedly triple Michigan State’s monetary offer.

Over the past 15 years, the money game is the fourth seismic shift to hit the world of college hockey, which involves roughly 60 teams from Alaska in the West to Maine in the East and as far South as Arizona State’s rapidly emerging program.

The first came in 2010 when Terry Pegula, the billionaire owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, gave more than $100 million to his alma mater, Penn State, to build an arena that facilitated the Nittany Lions’ move from club to Division I hockey. That made for a half-dozen Big Ten schools with hockey programs (with the Nittany Lions joining Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin). In short order, the Big Ten became the first Power Five conference to include hockey, and long-standing, hockey-only conferences like the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and the original Central Collegiate Hockey Association either disbanded or radically changed their membership.

The next two changes came in the past five years, as NIL meant, for the first time, college athletes could get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without losing their NCAA eligibility.

While football and basketball players were receiving six-figure deals from the start, the immediate impact on hockey was players hosting summer hockey camps, websites giving players a few hoodies in exchange for the use of an athlete’s name, and the aforementioned free burritos, with the Mexican chain Chipotle signing several Gophers skaters to endorse their food.

With the money offered to top players skyrocketing, there seems to be a movement afoot in Dinkytown to get the Gophers more involved in that game. Last month, social media posts were sent and a bare-bones website went live announcing the Golden Helmet Collective, which is lacking detail but seems to be the start of a hockey-specific effort to raise NIL money for future Gophers.

The opening of the transfer portal allowed players to move from one program to another without having to sit out or lose eligibility. This brought de facto free agency to college hockey, where smaller schools are now routinely losing their top players to bigger schools after a year or two.

One coach in Atlantic Hockey America, which is home to mid-major programs like Air Force, Bentley, Mercyhurst and Robert Morris, compared their conference to a shopping center, where many of the six players named to the AHA all-rookie team one season are likely to be playing in the Big Ten or Hockey East by the time they’re sophomores.

The Gophers have been sporadic but effective users of the transfer portal, bringing in players like NHL first-rounder Matthew Wood from Connecticut and goalie Liam Souliere, who backstopped much of last season’s Big Ten title run, from Penn State.

In November 2024, a lawsuit prompted the NCAA to allow players from Canadian major junior leagues to maintain college hockey eligibility, which had not been the case for the past four decades or so. Because major junior players often receive a stipend of a few hundred dollars per month for living expenses, they were long considered professionals in the eyes of the NCAA. So, in 2012, when current Minnesota Wild forward Ryan Hartman, who was committed to play college hockey at Miami of Ohio, went to play for a major junior team instead, his NCAA eligibility disappeared.

The opening up of major junior players to college recruitment has meant a windfall of new talent available to NCAA programs. McKenna is just the latest player from the Canadian leagues to pack for a home on campus in the fall, with Wild prospect Ryder Ritchie (Boston University), defenseman Benjamin Vigneault (Bemidji State), defenseman Henry Mews (Michigan), left winger Blake Montgomery (Wisconsin), defenseman Ethan Armstrong (Minnesota State Mankato), left winger Nathan Piling (St. Thomas), defenseman Grayden Siepmann (Minnesota Duluth) and center Cayden Lindstrom (Michigan State) all moving from major junior to college hockey in the fall.

North Dakota, which is a program in transition after a coaching change in the spring, landed two of the top players from the Victoria (B.C.) Royals, center Cole Rischny and defenseman Keaton Verhoeff.

McKenna made his future Nittany Lions announcement live on ESPN SportsCenter, in a move reminiscent of LeBron James and his infamous, nationally-televised “Decision” from 2010. While some decried the big-money signing as an omen of college hockey’s demise, others noted that having the sport covered on national TV in the middle of the summer, and attracting the top young talent on ice, at least for one season, is a net positive, even as the sport goes through yet another recent change.

Whatever your personal opinion, it’s clear that the future of college hockey has arrived. And for programs large and small to attract and keep the game’s best players, more than burritos will be required.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) – In the beginning of July, Leanne Wong repeated as College Sports Communicators Academic All-American and was named the Gators Student Assistant Coach on Thursday.

In 2025, Wong claimed one of nine multiple 10.0s in the nation, led the Gators with 27 event wins and was one of four in the nation to earn maximum of five 2025 Women’s Collegiate Association regular-season All-American honors.

After she graduated magna cum laude in May 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in Health Education and Behavior, the program announced her return on the coaching staff.

RELATED: SEC Media Days: Gator QB Lagway looks at the pressure to win as a “privilege.”

Following another NCAA Championship run and a 22-7 overall record last season, Florida added 10-time All-American eMjae Frazier to the 2026 roster.

Frazier coming from the University of California the last three seasons. In addition to her 10-All-America honors while with Cal, Frazier earned a total of 11 all-conference honors across the Pac-12 (2023, 2024) and Atlantic Coast Conference (2025). 

Tune into TV20 Sports on WCJB TV20 ABC daily at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. with Jake Rongholt and Olivia Eisenhauer with more here.

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Thirty-eight players – including 20 forwards, 14 defensemen and four goaltenders — have been invited by USA Hockey to its Hlinka Gretzky Cup Selection Camp, set to take place from July 28-August 3, at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Michigan.

Six players are natives of Minneosta and one is form Hudson and one from Fargo (see roster below).

The players are looking to earn a spot on the final 23-player U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team that will compete at the 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Cup in Brno, Czechia, and Trenčín, Slovakia, from August 11-16.

To view the complete 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Selection Camp roster, click HERE. For more information on the 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, click HERE.

U.S. UNDER-18 MEN’S SELECT TEAM STAFF ANNOUNCED

Rod Braceful (Detroit, Mich./USA Hockey) is serving as general manager of the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team with Marc Boxer (Hancock, Mich./USA Hockey) and Tony Gasparini (Sioux Falls, S.D./Sioux Falls Stampede) assisting with player personnel.

The U.S. coaching staff is led by head coach Kevin Porter (Plymouth, Mich./USA Hockey) with associate coach Ben Syer (Princeton, N.J./Princeton University) and assistant coaches Cody Chupp (Big Rapids, Mich./University of Minnesota Duluth) and Joe Howe (Plymouth, Minn./Yale University).

The staff also includes team leader Parker Metz (Kindred, N.D./USA Hockey), equipment managers Nate LaPoint (Stoughton, Wis./University of Wisconsin) and Marcus Allen (Angola, N.Y./Niagara University), team physician Dr. Michael Beasley (Omaha, Neb./Northeastern University), athletic trainer Phil Varney (Seattle, Wash./Seattle Kraken) and communications coordinator Francis Forte (Independence Township, N.J./USA Hockey).

ABOUT BRACEFUL

Rod Braceful is serving as general manager for the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team for the first time in 2025, after serving as the director of player personnel for the team in 2024 and 2022.

He’s also held the assistant general manager role for the U.S. Under-18 Men’s National Team at the 2025 and 2024 IIHF Under-18 Men’s World Championship events and was a player development staff member for the championship-winning U.S. Junior Select Team at the 2022 World Junior A Challenge.

Braceful, a native of Detroit, currently serves as the director of player personnel for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program, returning to the program in 2023 after a stint as assistant director of player personnel from 2018-21.

Prior to returning to the NTDP, he was a scout for the Chicago Blackhawks for two seasons (2021-23). He also was the director of scouting for the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL (2017-18) and a scout for the Sioux Falls Stampede (2015-17) in the same league.

ABOUT PORTER

Kevin Porter, who currently serves as an assistant coach with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program, will make his debut as the head coach of the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team.

Prior to his first season as an assistant coach with the NTDP, Porter spent the previous four seasons with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, helping the team to a pair of Calder Cup playoff appearances.

As a player, Porter played 12 professional seasons with four NHL and five AHL teams, winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016. He also played four seasons with the University of Michigan, winning the Hobey Baker Memorial Award in his senior season in 2007-08.

On the international stage, Porter represented the U.S. at two IIHF Under-18 Men’s World Championships, winning silver in 2004, and played for the USA Hockey National Team Development Program from 2002-04. He also competed for Team USA at two IIHF World Junior Championships, serving as captain of the 2006 U.S. National Junior Team.

ABOUT SYER

Ben Syer, head coach for Princeton University’s men’s hockey team, will serve on the coaching staff of the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team for the first time in 2025.

With over 25 years of NCAA Division I hockey coaching experience, Syer recently concluded his first season with Princeton. Prior to his time behind the Tigers bench, he spent 13 seasons, 12 of them as associate head coach, at Cornell University from 2011-2024. He was also associate head coach and director of recruiting at Quinnipiac University from 1999-2011.

His time with Cornell featured seven Ivy League championships and three ECAC Hockey regular-season titles, along with one ECAC Hockey tournament championship in 2024. During his time with the Big Red, Cornell made seven NCAA Tournament appearances.

ABOUT CHUPP

Cody Chupp, assistant men’s hockey coach at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is serving as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team for the first time in 2025.

Chupp, who recently concluded his third season as an assistant at UMD, brings 12 years of coaching experience to the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team’s staff. After beginning his career at Utica College (2013-14), Chupp spent three seasons as an assistant coach of the Green Bay Gamblers of the USHL (2014-17).

The Big Rapids, Michigan, native also served as the head coach for the USHL’s Lincoln Stars from 2017-20. After his tenure in Lincoln, Chupp spent two years (2020-22) as an assistant coach for the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the USHL before landing in Duluth.

Chupp played four seasons at Ferris State University before suiting up for the AHL’s Texas Stars and ECHL’s Wheeling Nailers as a professional.

ABOUT HOWE

Joe Howe, assistant coach for Yale University’s men’s hockey team, is serving as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-18 Men’s Select Team for the first time in 2025.

Howe served as an assistant coach for the U.S. Under-17 Men’s Select Team that won the 2024 Under-17 Five Nations Tournament.

The Plymouth, Minnesota, native began his coaching career in 2015-16 at the University of Denver as a volunteer assistant. He was elevated to director of hockey operations in 2017-18 before accepting a role at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as an assistant coach, a role he held for three years (2018-21) before joining Yale prior to the 2021-22 season.

As a player, Howe spent four seasons with Colorado College before embarking on a professional career that featured stints in the ECHL and AHL.