February 22, 2023
Q&A With ... Michelle Morgan, New Atlantic Hockey Commissioner
by Anthony Travalgia/CHN Reporter (@A_Travalgia)
Recently, Michelle Morgan was named the new commissioner of Atlantic Hockey and College Hockey America's women's league. Morgan will replace long-time commissioner Bob DeGregorio, who announced his retirement this past summer.
Morgan will officially begin her new role in April.
A former student-athlete at St. Thomas, Morgan has been the athletic director at John Carroll University since 2018, a Division III school in Ohio.
Her background in hockey goes beyond her playing days at St. Thomas. Morgan is also an active associate member of the Chicago Blackhawk Alumni Association. As the Association’s Director of Events, she spearheaded efforts for a pair of alumni games prior to the NHL Outdoor Stadium Series game in 2016 in Minneapolis and the 2017 NHL Winter Classic in St. Louis. She has also worked for the NHL's Minnesota Wild as an Account Executive for Corporate Sponsorships.
CHN: Since the formal announcement of your hiring, what have these last few days been like for you?
Morgan: They've been crazy, but they've also been wonderful. It's been nice to hear from a lot of people I haven't heard from in a long time and you know, kind of getting back into the hockey world and people that I started my career with and different teams and organizations or past teammates and it's been wonderful to feel so loved and supported and know that people are excited for me in this next opportunity.
CHN: What about being a commissioner is appealing to you?
Morgan: Great question. I think that you know this opportunity, one: it's really bringing me back to my roots and I was a former student-athlete and played ice hockey. My first jobs in sports, really, were in hockey, but it's the opportunity to really serve a lot of different campuses and a lot of different institutions through a sport that we all love and trying to grow the game. But it's working beyond one campus and one athletic department. Having been on a lot of governance committees through the NCAA the last few years and ultimately this last year serving on the Board of Governors really understanding at a high level, how the NCAA works and what's coming down the pipeline for student-athletes and a lot of member institutions. I felt that this is a great way to take what I've learned and developed and how can we be on the forefront and make sure that we're not just reacting to change but we're anticipating what might be coming and how are we nimble in that process?
CHN: Not only are you taking over as commissioner of Atlantic Hockey, but you’re also taking over commissioner of College Hockey America. How excited are you to be back involved in women’s hockey?
Morgan: I'm very excited. I look at when I was growing up playing, I grew up playing on boys teams. I played on a boys High School team because there wasn't opportunities [for women’s hockey]. And that was crazy because that was full check and a full physical game that's much different than the women's game. I also saw the first women's US team in the '98 Olympics and what they did for the sport. Cammi Granato has been a close family friend over the years and so, watching what she's done, and her trajectory and career It's been amazing, and I think that it's really important. I'm where I sit today because I've had really strong female role models in my life and that's certainly something that I want to pay it forward and be for these young women that are learning life lessons through the game of hockey and going on to achieve great things beyond their academic and hockey careers and college.
CHN: To go along with your hockey background, you played college hockey at St. Thomas. There’s been a lot of good things that have happened there recently, right? Gone to D-I, the school has a new facility coming down the road. How happy are you to see the recent growth in the programs there?
Morgan: It's wonderful. I left St. Thomas about five years ago, and it's certainly a much different institution than when I left. But I think you're always proud when your alma mater is doing great things and growing an athletic department, one: because I was a student-athlete but two: because I work in this industry, too, and I know how hard it is to come by the means to build new facilities and make enhancements for that student-athlete experience and really to attract and raise your program to the next level. But you know, St. Thomas has always done things in the right way and they've been purposeful and diligent in how they plan for the future. And I think that this new facility for basketball and hockey is evidence of that.
CHN: So you’ll really be pushing the CHA and AHA schools to start booking St. Thomas so you can get back more often?
Morgan: Well it's a good excuse. I don't know if they'll go for it. Time will tell I guess, but no, I get back a fair amount just personally. I used to teach at St. Thomas so I haven't taught there in the last year, year and a half but it's good to be back when I can get there. But yeah, if they if they want to play I'm not I'm not complaining
CHN: What John Carroll was able to do under your watch was certainly impressive, how does what you learned in your role as athletic director prepare you for this new role?
Morgan: That's a great question. There’s no playbook to be an athletic director. There's certainly no playbook to be a commissioner. What we lived through COVID certainly taught us that or validated that because things changed so many times and we didn't know what was coming next. We had to be flexible, nimble. Being an athletic director, you're constantly putting out fires that people don't know exist, right? And as one team or one program or things are working well, then something's bubbling up with another and so I think that, you know, that's really a transferable skill from being an athletic director at a D-III institution where the bandwidth looks different because we don't have the same administrative support structure to be able to be in a commissioner role where you're having to serve a lot of different people. Sometimes, not sometimes, oftentimes people have different opinions or believe their way is to be right, but it's how do you be the point person to facilitate conversation and ultimately take action that can improve or help all that are involved and to be able to move forward and in a way that's going to be able to build on the great things that are already happening. So sometimes it feels like as an AD, you play air traffic controller and I think that that's no different at times in a conference office, because there's so many different things that come up or so many different needs of the members that you're helping them support the student-athletes on their campus and the best way you know how.
CHN: Of course challenges are a part of any new role, what are some of the challenges you expect to face once you settle into this new position?
Morgan: Well, I don't know what I don't know, right? So those things always come up as you as you sit in the seat and you learn. I think I would take that question and kind of tell you more what my intention would be with the things that I don't know yet. It is to really build relationships and be visible on all of these member campuses in the short future in the spring and into the summer before we get to next hockey season, to be able to know what their facilities are like to be able to put faces to names and really to listen and understand what's worked well and what hasn't worked so well. What are the goals and objectives and things that we're trying to achieve here? And how can we how can we enhance some of the things that we're already doing, right? There's a good bone structure, but we can always be better and how are we purposeful with that and how are we planning for the future? And what's plan A, B, C and D in the event that things don't go as planned, because that's always the way it works sometimes.
CHN: Given your background as an athletic director, do you feel that gives you, I guess, maybe for lack of a better term, a leg up when you're sitting with these athletic directors and everyone's trying to figure out how to you know grow Atlantic Hockey, grow women's hockey, grow the game? You've been in their position, now you're just tackling it from a different angle.
Morgan: For sure. Hockey is one sport of many that they sponsor on their campus. That population of student athletes on that roster is a small fraction of everybody, there's only so much of the pie on every campus that you have to divvy up and make sure that you know, it's equitable and equitable doesn't always mean equal exactly, right?. But it means fair. And so I think that it's ensuring that we have a voice for our women's teams. Asking sometimes the hard questions and, and making sure that people understand, this is why we're doing these things. It’s my job to be an advocate and an ally, but also to ensure that we're doing things purposefully in order to grow the game both in the conference and beyond.
CHN: College hockey as a whole faces a unique challenge compared to other sports. Things like the transfer portal and NIL have played a big role on college sports. NIL is something that doesn’t seem as prominent in college hockey as it maybe is in say college football, even basketball. What is your position on NIL and how it impacts student-athletes and college sports?
Morgan: I will tell you in context, I came from the corporate sponsorship world. So I used to negotiate team partners and sponsors and many of which included endorsements by players however, there was a collective bargaining agreement that would tell us what we could or how many players needed to be involved in or working with agents. So, you know, a little bit different lens on the professional side, but I think that all of this is, is an amazing opportunity for our student athletes. And I think it's how do we live in a world that is mutually beneficial for our student athletes to capitalize and monetize their name, image and likeness and their abilities and being a student athlete, but also how are we helping support our institutions so that they're not cannibalizing one another, right? How do they exist in a space in a landscape that can grow the good things that we're doing to bring the awareness not only to those individuals, but to their institutions and to their sport and really working purposefully and educating people on how we might do that as this continues to evolve. What it looks like today certainly isn't what it looks like a year and a half ago, when it was all of a sudden the Wild West and everybody was scrambling to figure out how we implement this stuff. But I do think that it's a tremendous opportunity for young people to earn and be entrepreneurs in some ways that are teaching them greater life lessons outside of a sport or what the classroom can teach them.
CHN: You’re coming into Atlantic Hockey at an important time. Expansion in the conference has been on the table for several years now and it’s my understanding that a decision on expansion was tabled until a new commissioner was named. Can you tell me what you know about where things are at in that process?
Morgan: I know very little. I know exactly kind of what you've just told me that there was conversations and some exploration if you will about what that might look like or who are the type of the attributes of an institution that the conference might want to attract or consider extending an invitation or an opportunity to. However, for the reasons you've just said, in light of a change in leadership, administrators and coaches felt that it was is prudent to pause and say, ‘Let's wait and get our bearings and decide who our next leader is.’ I would anticipate that in short order, those conversations would be revived, but it's also my homework to catch up on to fully understand the landscape and what was discussed or why it was discussed and what the thoughts were, but also the opportunity to potentially poke holes or come in from a new lens and say, ‘have we considered this or why is it that way? Or is this how you feel about something is this in our best interest long term?’ And so those are those are all exercises that are going to have to begin again with the due diligence and the homework that I need to start with in short order.
CHN: Does it make you more open to expansion seeing that you do have a history with St. Thomas and how they've just expanded to D-I, your extensive background with John Carroll that's maybe sports-wise, a bit of a smaller school than some of these others? Does that make you more open to expanding both conferences and growing the game that way?
Morgan: Well, I think that there's a lot of layers to that question. I think growing the game is constant and in regardless of how many member institutions make up your conference, it's our jobs to be keepers of the game and stewards of the game to grow that and to teach to pay it forward, ensure that legacy and that traditional sports still exists. Regarding members, I think when if you look at the sheer numbers on the CHA side, on the women's side, there's more opportunity just based on how many exist right now. And yes, they still have that eight queue, but should there be any movement and change or people leave or don't sponsor a program, then that eight queue is far more at risk, just based on the numbers that we have. On the men's side, with Robert Morris coming back, you have 11 core members. And so that's, that's an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you know, even numbers make easier brackets and things that just make less headaches and scheduling. But that was kind of what you alluded to, in your previous question to me to say, ‘Is that something for consideration?’ I think it always is, but I think that what the women face and what the men face are two totally different scenarios.
CHN: Along those same lines, whether it’s from pundits like us, or it’s been talked about with the powers that be inside the conference, there’s also been rumblings of with expansion, a split of the conference could come as well. Maybe into an East and West, or something along those lines. Would that be something you’re open to?
Morgan: I think anything is on the table, right? Like I told you before, I don't know what I don't know. And so I think that you have to look at what the access ratios are to access into tournaments, but as a single sport conference we also have to be very cognizant about the long term viability of our sport and this program. I think that we’d want to make sure that we looked at any cause and effect relationship, not to jeopardize the future of access and what that might look like. We also want to make sure that we're giving our teams the opportunity to have a pathway to compete in the postseason at the national level, and how do we best do that?
CHN: When it comes to its D-I counterparts, Atlantic Hockey doesn’t get the recognition that the other conferences do. We’ve seen the conference as a whole really grow these last few years. How do you plan keeping Atlantic Hockey on this same trajectory?
Morgan: Well, I'm a doer, and sometimes I come up with these crazy ideas and how do we make sure that we're doing things that our people are paying attention to and telling your story. I alluded to earlier in another question about the bone structure, and I think the bone structures really good here and both of these conferences, I think that we don't tell our stories nearly enough or as thoroughly enough. You read big box scores but you're not fully always understanding about the people that are behind those scores and what they're doing outside of the rink and in the classroom and in the community. But also the ability to elevate that brand, right? And to know this is a conference, it's a strong conference, there's a rich history tradition, it might not be as well-known or the first thought of compared to some of the other conferences, but how do we get there and how are we diligent in the marketing and branding of what we're putting out there.
CHN: In an ideal world, and I know we’ve seen in these last few years that it’s kind of hard to predict an ideal world, but what does Atlantic Hockey look like in five years?
Morgan: Oh, my gosh, that's the million dollar question. I would simply answer your question by saying this: that I think down the road that this is a conference that is thriving, that is producing national champions, that is competing at a high level, and that is a consistent mainstay on the national stage. Success requires a lot of due diligence and a lot of time, effort and energy. I think that there are people in this conference and member institutions and coaches and players that are willing to do that and want to continue to compete at high level. So how does the conference help them do that so that we all can achieve that success?