When the UMass women’s club hockey team asked the community for help in an effort to fund their season this year, one local organization stepped up to answer the call.

The Midnight Ride Collective is marketed as an NIL collective specifically focused on UMass football. But when co-founders Corey Schneider and Tim McDermott heard that the UMass women’s club hockey team might not have a season next year due to a clerical error in their budget approval process, it didn’t take them long to jump into action.

“Corey and I, we’re both former athletes, so why not help athletes? We both have a passion for UMass. But it doesn’t just have to just be living and breathe within football. It’s UMass ... it’s the college experience,” McDermott said. “It’s pretty easy to put ourselves into the student’s shoes, the athlete’s shoes and say, what kind of experience would you like to get out of this? Nobody wants to walk away and say, ‘Yeah, well, our club was shut down because we didn’t have any money.’ It goes as a bad mark against their overall experience.”

Schneider immediately got into touch with Danielle Craig and Brianna O’Neill, two members of the team, asking how Midnight Ride Collective could help. He also got in touch with head coach Bill Wright, and after speaking with the team about what they might need, the collective made a “generous” hole sponsorship donation for the team’s upcoming golf fundraiser at Rockland Golf Course on Saturday, July 29. The pair have also floated the idea of having a portion of the Midnight Ride Collective membership fees go to the women’s hockey club for newcomers who join the collective, though the details of that haven’t been worked out yet.

“It just feels like that is something that you have to help and hope that it could send a message to UMass … like okay, the football collective will step up and help, to kind of move them to a point where let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Schneider said. “I believe that ultimately, UMass should be making this right. But if they’re not going to make it right, as things tend to go with big state schools, it doesn’t get done, the last thing we want to see is the women not have a chance to actually play sports at UMass.”

As of publication, the UMass women’s club hockey GoFundMe has raised $10,598 of their $45,000 goal.

Regardless of whether they hit their fundraising goal or not, the UMass women’s club hockey team will have a season next year – captain Dani Craig told the Gazette that their games are scheduled. Whatever money they don’t raise from the variety of fundraisers they’re hosting and the GoFundMe will come out of players’ dues, expected to go up from a typical $1,500 yearly payment. To make ends meet, the team will cut costs as needed in other places, like with team apparel.

Craig says the team expects to continue fundraising throughout the season in hopes that they’ll be able to pay back at least some of the players’ extra dues.

“(The women’s hockey team) is doing a good job of pushing out fundraising efforts and getting a GoFundMe and having the golf tournament support. That’s going to be fantastic. And if we can help support them, we absolutely will push the message, using each other’s channels and amplifying that message to drive the greater good,” McDermott said. “We want to make sure that if we can play a small part in it, and we know it’s a small part, but we are more than happy to support UMass through and through.”

Schneider and McDermott are both UMass alums, and feel strongly about the community surrounding UMass athletics. Schneider also hoped that the hockey community, especially in the northeast, would step up and help. Some individuals in hockey have already stepped up to help; Cassie Campbell-Pascall, a former Canadian women’s ice hockey player who led Team Canada to multiple Olympic gold medals, made the single biggest individual donation to the GoFundMe, contributing $1,500 to make sure that UMass can play.

“I’ll say this, that if we’re now a national program that is nationally competitive in hockey and winning national championships in ice hockey for men, you would hope that the hockey community in this part of the country would also step up, and I invite them to step up and help out if they want to grow that game,” Schneider said. “Or if they want to just have the football collective help them grow that game, I guess we can do that. But you would hope that there was a lot in the hockey community that would ... want to get involved too.”

Ultimately, both Schneider and McDermott believe that the power of the community can help the women’s hockey club accomplish its goals. The two are passionate about UMass athletics and how they can bring a community together, and they hope that relationship can be reciprocal.

“We feel that how you really grow a school, in our opinion, is through sports, whether it’s club sports or varsity sports. That’s what brings a community together,” Schneider said.

Hannah Bevis can be reached at hbevis@gazettenet.com. Follow her on Twitter @Hannah_Bevis1.]]>