Dayle Ross had begun doing postseason workouts in the spring with teammates on the St. Cloud State women’s hockey team when she heard something troubling.

“I was a little bit worried because I heard clicking in my knee,” Ross said. “I thought it was something like my patella tendon is torn or there was some cartilage floating around. You never know.

“I reached out to my trainer and asked if I could get an MRI. It showed that it was a torn ACL and didn’t figure it would be that extreme. When I found out, I was going full out with the girls, playing games. I was feeling the best I’ve ever felt. I remember having a conversation with

(SCSU coach) Brian (Idalski)

and saying that I’ve never felt so good after a season and physically strong.”

In short order, she had surgery to repair the damage.

“We got it done within a week,” Ross said. “It was pretty fast. I’m so thankful for the staff and the doctor. If I didn’t get it done, I could have wrecked something else. This was probably the best move I made for me for hockey.

“By graduation, I was still limping and in a brace. I stayed an extra month to work with the physio and (SCSU athletic trainer) Rachel (Nagel) and all the amazing staff in St. Cloud. I can’t thank them enough for helping an old senior out.”

Ross, a 5-foot-6 22-year-old defenseman from Spirit River, Alberta, is in Ottawa and will be on hand at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, for the Professional Women’s Hockey League Draft. Online, you can watch the draft on the PWHL’s

YouTube station.

With Vancouver and Seattle joining as expansion teams, there will be 48 players picked over six rounds. Some draft projections have Ross going as high as the top 30 in the draft.

“At the last second, I saw the Hockey News had me ranked in the top 30 and thought, ‘maybe I should go,'” she said. “I thought that I’d be kicking myself if I don’t go. If I don’t get picked, there’s amazing people that will be there and all these coaches I’ve talked to. There are players that I grew up with or played with that will be there.

“I just want to go there for the experience more than anything.”

St. Cloud State University Athletics

Ross said that her rehabilitation from surgery is ahead of schedule. She has begun jogging and is lifting weights.

“They just don’t want me to turn my knee,” she said. “I can move forward and backward and side-to-side slowly. It’s about the way I move it to protect my ACL that is starting to re-attach. I can run as long as I want, but I can’t sprint yet. It’s a slow process. I’m still getting stronger.”

Ross is known for being an ardent trainer both during and after the season. During the offseason, she is typically on the ice 3-4 times a day with either a skating instructor or giving skating lessons.

She is hoping to be able to get back on the ice by the end of July.

“I’m so used to skating all the time that I’m missing it,” Ross said. “I’m hoping that when I get back to playing hockey, my love for the game will be that much more. I hate that I’m at this point, but I know when I get back, I’ll enjoy it more.”

It sounds like she may be missing coaching youth players as much as she misses working on her own skills.

“I’m hoping to get on the ice as soon as I can because I’m missing working with the kids,” she said.

St. Cloud State University Athletics

While she was playing through her injury, Ross ended up having the best season of her college career. She had 13 assists, 15 points, a career-best 103 shots, 46 blocked shots and led

the Huskies

in plus/minus with a career-best plus-11.

To put that plus/minus number in perspective, her next closest teammates were sophomore forward Sofianna Sundelin, senior defenseman Ella Anick and freshman defenseman Siiri Yrjölä, who were all plus-3.

Keep in mind, Ross was playing on the top defensive pairing, so she was facing most of the top scoring forwards in NCAA Division I every game.

“It’s not like I didn’t play against top lines. I was out there a lot,” Ross said. “I think (Team USA and Minnesota forward) Abbey Murphy didn’t scored on me a single time. I know that’s a good stat to have and I’m thankful for that. I know they don’t look at just stats.”

So after she got injured, how was she able to get on the ice and play?

“After the week we played Wisconsin, we had an off weekend and I took that week off and played fine,” Ross said. “I didn’t have any pain. My knee would just swell after the game sometimes.

“I did the rehab before practice, I would do some extra stuff to get through the season. I didn’t realize that I tore my ACL. My quad was strong enough to cope with the pain and cope that sensibility of my knee shifting. I played the whole season without a brace.”

St. Cloud State University Athletics

Ross’ agent is Nick DiLisi and she said that he has been talking to some PWHL teams as they prepare for the draft.

“He talks with them about who I am as a player and as a person,” she said. “He does the talking … I have no idea how many teams. A couple for sure. If there was none that my agent was talking to, I’d be a little worried. He does all that work for me.

“He’s really helped me with taking phone calls from teams and dealing with all the media stuff. He deals with talking with all the teams, which I’m not good at. So I really appreciate that about him.”

Ross also has an ally in

Idalski, who was named the first head coach of the Vancouver team on Monday, June 23.

“Brian is my little agent as well,” said Ross, who played three seasons for Idalski. “He has so many contacts and knows so many people and knows me personally. If there’s something bad about me, he’ll tell them. If there’s something good about me, he’ll tell them. It’s nice to have him on my side.”

Ross said that she is just hoping that she gets a shot in the PWHL and was happy with how she played last season.

“At the end of the year, I had a decent amount of points and I thought I played really well,” she said. “At the end, you never really know. The media talks about all the players that score a zillion goals and have all the points on the top teams. But there are really good players on other teams that maybe don’t get as many points, but they might get as many points if they were on one of those top teams.”

While the surgery has been a setback to her training, Ross is optimistic about her chances of getting drafted.

“I was really worried about my injury, but that’s just part of the game,” she said. “I’m a good defenseman and I have to believe that I’m good. I have to sell myself a bit.”

Ross is one of three former SCSU players likely to be drafted. The other players are

forward Emma Gentry

and

goalie Sanni Ahola,

who also finished their eligibility.

Ross has earned her degree in exercise science and was a two-time WCHA All-Academic Team pick. In her career, she had 33 assists, 40 points, 252 shots, 92 penalty minutes, was a plus-6 and had 269 blocked shots in 142 games. In 2022-23, Ross set an NCAA record with 104 blocked shots.

The Division I Board of Directors on Monday adopted additional changes to NCAA rules to implement the court-approved House settlement. The changes — which codify roster limits, including legislated exceptions for current student-athletes whose roster spots would have been impacted by those limits — are effective July 1.

“With the court’s approval of the House settlement, college sports are entering a new era of increased benefits for college athletes,” said Tim Sands, chair of the board and president at Virginia Tech. “Today’s vote to codify the roster provisions of the settlement formally removes limits on scholarships for schools that opt in, dramatically increasing the potential available scholarships for student-athletes across all sports in Division I.”

Moving forward, NCAA rules for Division I programs will no longer include sport-specific scholarship limits. Instead, schools in the defendant conferences and others that opt in to the settlement rules and associated benefits to student-athletes will have roster limits, and schools will have the option to offer scholarships to any and all of those student-athletes. This change will dramatically increase the number of scholarships potentially available to Division I student-athletes, including more than doubling the possible number of scholarships that can be offered to women. NCAA schools have a deadline of June 30 to indicate whether they intend to opt into the settlement for the 2025-26 academic year.

The rules changes include legislated exceptions for current student-athletes with remaining eligibility whose roster spots would have been impacted by immediate implementation of the roster limits. Those designated student-athletes will be identified by their current or former schools, and regardless of the school for which they participate, they will not count toward that school’s roster limits for the duration of their eligibility.

The division’s core guarantees — which include scholarship protections — are not impacted by the rules changes. If a student-athlete receiving athletics aid loses a roster spot for roster management, athletics performance reasons, or due to injury, that student-athlete’s scholarship cannot be revoked unless and until the student chooses to transfer.

A document containing frequently asked questions and the answers to those questions was released shortly after settlement approval and will be updated as appropriate. 

Decision-Making Working Group

The board received an update from the Decision-Making Working Group on recommendations that, if adopted at the board’s August meeting, would restructure governance in Division I.

After weeks of soliciting membership feedback, via surveys and receiving direct correspondence from stakeholders, the working group met again in mid-June and made some modifications to its original concepts for committee composition and structure.

The working group’s recommendations would streamline decision-making, creating a flatter and more agile governance structure that would enable Division I to act more quickly when changes are needed. A more streamlined structure would also more clearly delineate where responsibility for membership decisions lies, thus increasing member schools’ accountability for rules they propose and adopt.

The recommended structure would, however, continue to highlight the tie between college sports and academics, focus on increased athletics opportunities, and emphasize providing a safe and healthy athletics environment. It will also protect access to championships for all Division I conferences and preserve existing revenue distribution formulas.

If ultimately adopted in August, the Division I governance structure will comprise:

• The Division I Board of Directors, which will maintain oversight over the division’s finances, litigation and the NCAA infractions process (for violations or rules unrelated to the settlement terms).
• The Administrative Committee, which will report to the board and will have legislative oversight for rules not included in the settlement.
• The Academics and Eligibility Committee, which will report to the Administrative Committee and which — via two subcommittees — will have oversight over minimum standards for academics and athletics eligibility requirements.
• The Membership Committee, which will report to the Administrative Committee and will have oversight over minimum national standards for NCAA and conference membership requirements.
• The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which will report directly to the Division I Board of Directors.
• Sport-specific oversight committees, which will report to the Administrative Committee when needed and will have authority over playing and practice seasons, recruiting rules, Division I playing rules and championship administration. Sport oversight committees already exist in football (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) and men’s and women’s basketball.

For all of the committees, the working group determined that voting representation — including the weighted voting for autonomy conferences, totaling approximately 65% on each committee — was appropriate, reflecting the recognizable prominence of the schools competing in those conferences, as well as the increased legal scrutiny those conferences face as compared with their peers.

The working group supported seats designated for certain subdivisions in Division I being populated by representatives from schools or conference offices.

Conference membership requirements

In April, the board directed NCAA staff to share concepts for potential adjustments to conference membership requirements with NCAA members for feedback.

After reviewing the feedback from NCAA members, the board took no action, noting a broad lack of support for changes at this time. Although the board will not consider any further changes to the conference membership requirements in the near future, it will consider a moratorium on applications for schools reclassifying from Division II and III to Division I during its Aug. 5 videoconference.

EASTON, Mass. (June 23, 2025) – Junior Evan Orr and sophomores Anthony Galante, Charlie Banquier, and Dominick Campione of the Stonehill College men’s hockey program have been named to the College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-District® Team, as announced by the organization.

To qualify for Academic All-District® honors, student-athletes must have competed in at least 90 percent of their team’s games or started at least 66 percent of them. For goaltenders, eligibility requires starting at least 50 percent of a team’s contests.

Galante, a semifinalist for the 73rd Walter Brown Award and a DI Independent All-Star Team selection, earns his first CSC Academic All-District® recognition. A finance major with a 3.61 cumulative GPA, Galante led the Skyhawks in scoring with 22 points on 13 goals and nine assists. His 22 points established a new program record for a single season during the Division I era, surpassing the previous mark of 18 set by junior captain Frank Ireland in 2023–24. Galante also tied for the team lead with four power-play goals and tallied two game-winning goals.

Orr also receives Academic All-District® honors for the first time in his career. The junior defenseman posted a 3.64 GPA while delivering a breakout season on the ice. Named NCAA Division I Independent Player of the Month for January, Orr finished the season with a career-best 15 points, including eight goals and seven assists. His eight goals ranked second on the team, and he led the Skyhawks with five game-winning goals—three of which came in overtime. One of those overtime winners lifted Stonehill to a historic 3–2 victory over No. 9 UMass Lowell, the program’s first win over a nationally ranked Division I opponent.

Campione and Banquier round out Stonehill’s Academic All-District® selections after each earned a 3.61 GPA while majoring in finance. Campione emerged as one of the team’s most productive blueliners, ranking second among defensemen and fourth overall on the squad with 13 points (3 goals, 10 assists). Banquier contributed a career-high 10 points on two goals and eight assists over 31 games and ranked third on the team in blocked shots with 43.

Stonehill’s four CSC Academic All-District^® honorees mark the most honorees for the Skyhawks at the Division I level. Stonehill men’s hockey improved by 10 wins in its third season at the DI level, capping off the 2024-25 campaign with a 12-22 mark.

About College Sports Communicators

College Sports Communicators (CSC) was founded in 1957 and is a 3,200+ member national association for strategic, creative, and digital communicators across intercollegiate athletics in the United States and Canada. The current name of the organization was adopted following a member-wide vote on Aug. 31, 2022.

 

From its founding in 1957 until the 2022 name change, the organization was known as College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

 

The name change signaled a significant step in a broader strategic plan to highlight the association’s evolution and growth. The move better aligns with the association’s membership makeup and further positions the organization to support and advocate for its members who serve in the communications, digital, and creative sports industry, regardless of position or title.

 

The organization, which celebrated its 65th anniversary during the 2021-22 academic year, is the second-oldest management association in all intercollegiate athletics. College Sports Communicators became an affiliated partner with NACDA (National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics) in December 2008.

 

For the latest on Stonehill Athletics, follow the Skyhawks via social media on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

On Friday night, a lifelong dream will come true for James Hagens.

The only question is how early.

The 18-year-old from Boston College is a no-doubt first-rounder in the NHL Entry Draft. The No. 3 ranked North American skater according to NHL Central Scouting, Hagens falls between No. 2 overall and No. 5 in most pre-draft rankings. In a poll at The Athletic, evaluators were unanimous in voting Hagens as the “best hands” in his entire class.

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No matter where Hagens goes, he’s going to relish the moment.

That’s the advice he’s received from Boston College teammates like Ryan Leonard, Gabriel Perreault, and Jacob Fowler, all of whom have been drafted in the early rounds over the past two seasons.

“They all say the same thing: Just be grateful. Take it all in,” Hagens said. “It goes by quick. This summer is a little crazy, but this is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. So these are all really special moments that you have to make sure you cherish with yourself and your family. It’s just something to be grateful for.”

Hagens has a chance to be drafted the highest of the bunch.

‘I’ve had to work for everything’

The son of two teachers, Hagens grew up on Long Island in Hauppauge, NY. His father, Michael, played defenseman for Division III SUNY-Brockport (1997-2000), and was quick to get the family hooked on hockey.

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He built a backyard rink and all three of his children took to it.

Hagens’ older brother, Michael, is also a defenseman at Boston College, while his younger sister Emma plays at the Portledge School. Growing up they ventured to Islanders games at Nassau Coliseum and Hagens had a picture with Matt Martin on his bedroom wall. A playmaking forward on the smaller side, he liked watching clips of Blackhawks star Patrick Kane.

After being coaching by his father on the Long Island Royals, Hagens starred at Rhode Island powerhouse Mount St. Charles and the US National Development Team Program before landing at Boston College as a 17-year-old last fall. Feeling he’d accomplished enough after two seasons of juniors, he was ready to raise the bar.

“I wanted to be challenged at the college level,” Hagens said. “I wanted to join Boston College and I wanted to be pushed every day, playing against guys that are older and stronger that will push you and get you ready for the NHL… I knew that it would be the best step in getting me ready.”

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Though it all, Hagens has carried a work ethic his parents instilled in him at a young age. When he attended the NHL Combine in June, he was hopeful that it stood out to teams.

“Just how high my compete level is,” Hagens said. “I love winning. I will do anything to win. Something that’s helped me get to the point where I am today is just how hard I’ve been able to work my whole life.

“Nothing has ever come easy. I’ve had to work for everything that I’ve ever gotten before. And that’s something I’m super grateful for. That’s something that’s just within my family. That’s something I was raised up, taught from my parents and my coaches. So going into those meetings, just really expressing how hard I compete and how badly I want to be on a team and hopefully win a Stanley Cup someday.”

‘He has that fire’

When Hagens arrived at Conte Forum, his new coach Greg Brown was struck by his demeanor right away.

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“He’s a happy kid,” Brown said. “He comes into the rink every day with a smile. Just excited to be there. You can feel his positive energy when he comes into the locker room.”

As a teenager playing in rough-and-tumble Hockey East, Hagens acclimated to the competition quickly. He was named the Rookie of the Month in November, and once he returned from an exceptional World Juniors tournament — five goals, four assists en route to a Gold Medal — in January, Brown saw Hagens raise the bar even higher.

“You could see when games were tight, that he would elevate and really want to assert himself and try and take over the game,” Brown said. “Or (have) a major impact in the game. So he has that competitiveness. He has that fire.”

Hagens wound up with 37 points (11 goals, 26 assists) in 37 games as a freshman. The goal total wasn’t huge, but Hagens was centering a line with NHL-bound wingers in Leonard and Perrault. He was happy to make the right play to set a teammate up. Hagens just wanted the 27-8-2 Eagles to win games.

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Though it wasn’t a Macklin-Celebrini-style explosion, he was pleased to be producing at a point-per-game rate given the level of competition he was facing.

“You’re playing against guys that are 25, 24-year-olds every night,” Hagens said. “It’s tough. It’s hard hockey, but I’m super grateful to be able to have the year I was able to have with the group of guys we did have.”

Away from the rink, there was one other thing that stood out to Brown.

“He cares,” Brown said. “He cares about his teammates. He wants to do the right things. He wants to learn. There’s a lot of — it’s not just going out there to show off his skill package. He wants to play the right way within the frame of the game and that’s not always easy for guys who grow up always being the best guy on the ice. He wants to understand the big picture of how it all works and then be able to be as big a factor as he can within that framework.”

‘Getting drafted has been my dream’

Now comes the uncertainty for Hagens.

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After earning spots on the US Development Team and at Boston College, he won’t have agency in where he’s drafted. It could be his hometown Islanders at No. 1 overall, the Bruins at No. 7, or anywhere from East Coast to West.

If he slides to Boston, Hagens said he’d be embrace being a Bruin.

“I love Boston,” Hagens said. “Being at Boston College, we’re right in the middle of Boston there. So it’s a beautiful city. Only great things to say about it. I love it there.”

After the draft, Hagens said he doesn’t know if he’ll be back in Chestnut Hill for another season. That’s a conversation he’ll need to have with the team that drafts him and his family. NHL teams retain the rights of their draft picks throughout their college careers, so there’s no rush for most selections.

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Brown would certainly welcome him back with open arms.

“He’s a driver on our team,” Brown said. “A key guy. All over the ice, but especially in offensive situations. He’s able to create offense where there seems to be none, and that’s not an easy thing to do. I also think he would grow his leadership in the locker room and on the ice coming back as a sophomore.”

Over the past year, there’s been plenty of speculation about where he’ll land next, but Hagens is doing his best to embrace the noise. Sooner or later, he knows his name will be called, and he’ll be one step closer to the NHL.

“Honestly, you just kinda have to be grateful about it,” Hagens said. “Being able to hear your name in those conversations and obviously leading up to the draft now, being allowed the opportunity to get drafted into any organization in the league, it’s something you have to be grateful for. It’s one step in your process, but you just have to be ready.

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“Getting drafted has been my dream my whole entire life. That’s why I started playing hockey. That’s why I still play. I’m really just grateful for everything right now. The noise will always be there, but you just have to make sure you’re living in the moment.”

Read the original article on MassLive.

Click here to view Trev Alberts’ Monday press conference.

Trev Alberts’ job title is Texas A&M’s Director of Athletics. In some ways, tailor maybe should be added.

That’s a reaction to how Alberts described the task he and A&M face in navigating the changing future of college athletics.

“(It’s) how to thread the needle between tradition and modernization,” Alberts said in a Monday meeting with local reporters inside a third-floor conference room at Kyle Field.

Maintaining traditions at A&M won’t be a problem. Successfully modernizing A&M’s athletic department to excel in the new era of Name, Imagine & Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing projects to be much more challenging.

Reacting to the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which allows NCAA member schools to directly pay student-athletes, Alberts announced that A&M will distribute $18 million to football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball.

A popular national template suggests directing 75 percent of funds to football, 15 percent to basketball, five percent to baseball and five percent to women’s sports.

“Some institutions have chosen to use that (75-15-5-5 model) as a template for their institution,” Alberts said. “Our percentages don’t reflect that. We’ve chosen to make market-based decisions based on revenue.”

The distribution could cause derision within athletic programs. Coaches in different programs could be competing against each other to get more funding.

Alberts said that hasn’t been a problem at A&M, but he has heard that has been an issue for other colleagues.

Alberts declined to reveal the percentages to be shared with A&M’s athletes for competitive reasons. But football is the only revenue-producing sport at Texas A&M, so it stands to reason that the majority of A&M’s shared revenue will go to football players.

“I’m not going to run out and tell you exactly what the numbers are and what the percentages are because there’s a competitive piece to that, right?” he said. “But I think you’re going to start to figure out where the numbers lie.”

He said in a year there may be more data available that provides at least guidelines how players perhaps should be compensated not only by sport, but by position.

Alberts acknowledged that some programs could be at a disadvantage to conference opponents.

For example, Kentucky, which puts great emphasis on basketball, figures to share a greater percentage of revenue with its basketball players than many other SEC programs.

“You’re not going to knowingly put any of your programs at a competitive disadvantage,” Alberts said. “But I think it’s absolutely true you could find yourselves in a situation — based on the priorities of the investments — that some of your programs will have less rev share than some of their competitors.”

Some of the differences, at least, could potentially be offset by greater NIL opportunities.

Alberts said if a program, like football, has players earning substantial money though fair-market NIL deals then some funds could be redirected to other sports.

To enhance those NIL possibilities, Alberts said a new position is being created to help locate NIL opportunities and ensure they meet the standard “fair market value” as determined by Deloitte, which will act as a third-party clearinghouse for NIL deals.

“We’re not ready to announce a name, but we are hiring a new position that will be an associate AD reporting directly to me that is an attorney,” Alberts said. “It’s basically, what is our strategy and how do we leverage every one of our assets?

“If we’re able to get fair market value NIL deals at a certain level, we may not need as much rev share there. We can put the rev share over at this sport because they’re not as successful. So, that’s why I think that fair market value NIL strategy is going to be really important to our future.”

Alberts later added: “We have to be better than our peers. To me, that’s the differentiator in the game. That’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort in making sure we have a good strategy there (NIL).”

Alberts is hopeful that a sound, effective strategy could launch A&M to great competitive success.

“This is our time,” he said. “If we have the courage to make tough decisions and act and modernize in some areas, I think Texas A&M can separate and do things we’ve never done here before.

“That’s why we’re all here. The opportunities are here at Texas A&M to do things that most people can’t do because of scale, because of resources and other things.”