One Rink Equals Four Liberty U. Teams

     Liberty University is unique among southern schools with a club hockey team. For starters, Liberty is the largest evangelical Christian university in the world, with some 12,000 students living on its Lynchburg, Va., campus and another 37,000 studying on-line. For another thing, while the vast majority of schools affiliated with the American Collegiate Hockey Association have just one club team, Liberty is one of only two schools among the ACHA’s 421 that have four club teams: a men’s team competing in each of the association’s three divisions and a women’s D1 squad. The other school is Robert Morris University in Illinois.
     But the thing that really distinguishes Liberty from the hockey playing flock in the South, especially for all you coaches and players who endure midnight practices and games, is that Liberty has its own ice rink on campus. Each of its teams has multiple practices every week at the 2,000-seat LaHaye Ice Center and plays its home games in prime time on weekends. (The rink also is home to the Virginia Military Institute’s D3 team, and other area colleges play there when their home rinks are unavailable.)
     While Liberty’s hockey history goes back to 1985, there was only one Flames team -- competing first at the D2 level and later at D1 -- until 2006, when evangelical Christian minister, writer and speaker Timothy LaHaye, who serves on Liberty’s board of trustees, and his wife, Beverly, donated the money for construction of the campus rink that bears their last name. LaHaye co-authored the 12-book series “Left Behind,” a fictional account of the rapture presented in the Bible's Book of Revelations.
     The ice arena enabled Liberty to add a men’s D2 team and the D1 women’s team for the 2006-07 season. This season, the Flames’ club program was expanded to include a D3 men’s team. “Obviously, having a rink on campus is a huge boom to the sport at Liberty,” says Kirk Handy, who in addition to coaching the D1 Flames and serving as director of the arena oversees the entire Liberty club hockey program. That facility, along with the Christian campus and multiple hockey teams, is a powerful lure to high school, junior and midget players weighing where to go to college.
     Handy, who is in his 10th year as a Liberty head coach after a three-year playing career in the Flames’ red, white and blue sweater, says Liberty offers prospective players their choice among the three teams. The D1 team plays a 45-game schedule, the D2 squad a 25-game slate and the D3 team plays 18-20 games, and each practices two to four times a week. “Each team requires a different commitment,” says Handy. “Some players say, ‘Hey, I love to play hockey but I don’t have that much time to put into it.’ They would be better suited to D3.”
     About 50 percent of the players on each of the men’s teams are Canadians. The other players tend to come from Virginia and its neighbor states Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan and New York. “A lot of it is word of mouth. We run summer hockey camps at our rink. Kids come to the camp, have a good experience and tell their friends about us. We obviously look for serious-type kids. Most Christian kids see Liberty as a good place to be,” says Handy, who was born and played his minor hockey in Ontario but headed to the States for a Christian-based college education.
     While you might think the three-team setup at Liberty is a natural in-house feeder system for the successful D1 team, Handy says there is little movement by players between the three teams. “Our (D1) goalie, who has played very well, played the last two years at D2. This is his first year in D1. You might see one or two players go between D1 and D2 during the season itself,” the coach says.
     This year’s D1 team, winner of all but two of its 20 games and ranked No. 3 in the nation, has its sights set on the ACHA national tournament in March in Illinois. Either Liberty’s D1 or D2 squad has qualified for nationals every year since 2004 but neither has pocketed a championship. It came closest in 2006, losing the D1 title game in overtime to Oakland (Mich.) University. The Flames’ women’s team reached nationals last spring.
     The D2 Flames are 9-2-0 and ranked eighth in the Southeast Region. The D3 skaters are 4-4-0. Both teams could wind up in a conference next season, but the D1 Flames will continue to play an independent schedule, according to Handy. Another women’s team is also in the cards, he says.