MILWAUKEE — When Baylee Marabella got interested in ice hockey while growing up in Wisconsin, she had to play alongside boys up until high school because she couldn’t find a girls team in her area.

That isn’t as much of a problem in hockey hotbeds such as Wisconsin anymore with a steady increase in the number of girls playing the sport. That trend helped launch the coaching career of Marabella, who was known as Baylee Wellhausen when she played on three Frozen Four teams with Wisconsin from 2014-18.

Marabella now coaches Milwaukee School of Engineering, which just finished its inaugural season in Division III competition. It’s one of more than two dozen D-III schools to start women’s hockey teams over the last decade, capitalizing on the relative lack of cost compared to doing so in Division I.

“It’s incredible,” Marabella said of the rapid growth.

MSOE was one of 78 schools to play women’s ice hockey this year at the Division III level, which doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. That represents a 50% increase from 2015, when there were 52 schools playing the sport at this level.

Marabella believes those numbers can keep going up.

“There’s going to be more and more girls who want to play college (hockey), so as we keep moving forward, the demand is going to be higher,” Marabella said.

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On the rise

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Women’s hockey in North America is on the rise and not only at the Division III level. The Professional Women’s Hockey League is two months from completing its second season amid signs that attendance is up. The six-team league is drawing an average of 7,300 fans this season — up from 5,500 last year — and might expand by as many as two franchise next season.

USA Hockey had 73,083 registrations among girls in 2023-24, a 47.4% increase over its 2013-14 total (49,587). Boys registrations increased by 4.8% over the same time, from 302,303 to 316,737.

“Overall, the skill level has gotten so much better over the years that it becomes one of those sports that was almost a no-brainer to be adding at the Division III level,” said Joe Cranston, who coaches defending champion Wisconsin-River Falls, which hosts the D-III championship March 28-30. The 12-team tournament begins Saturday on campus sites.

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Cost differences at bigger programs

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There are 44 women’s hockey programs in Division I and Division II, a 12.8% rise from 2015 (39). The two divisions compete in a single national tournament, which ends this year with the Women’s Frozen Four March 21-23 in Minneapolis.

The modest growth at the higher level can be blamed on the bigger costs with adding a D-I program. Ice availability is a factor for any team at any level, and setting budgets is difficult for any athletic director dealing with the NCAA House settlement and name, image and likeness compensation questions.

Minnesota reported operating expenses of a little over $3.6 million for women’s hockey in 2023-24. Michigan released a feasibility study saying expenses would run about $4.5 million annually if it started a women’s hockey program.

By contrast, Wisconsin-River Falls reported $197,087 in women’s hockey expenses in its 2024 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act survey.

Michelle McAteer has a unique perspective, as a new commissioner of a Division I conference (the Western Collegiate Hockey Association) who finished a 14-season run coaching Division III program Augsburg last year.

“Hockey’s an expensive sport to operate, and to operate a rink is an expensive investment,” McAteer said. “At the Division III level, not everyone has their own rinks on campus. You can get by playing in community rinks and renting. The facility demands at the Division I level are quite different. The investment and infrastructure are a lot more. Everything is more. They have more significant travel. They have a more significant equipment budget, the staffing differences.”

There’s probably enough talent nowadays to accommodate more Division I programs. The difference is apparent on the ice.

“Ten to 12 years ago, there were a lot of teams at the Division I level that might have had one good line, a line-and-a-half, maybe two,” said coach Mark Johnson, whose Badgers have been the top-ranked team in women’s hockey most of the season. “Now everybody’s got two or three lines, maybe four lines, that can compete and play at a real high level.”

Because the schools in larger divisions haven’t added women’s hockey programs at a rate that correlates with the growth in the sport at the youth level, it’s created more opportunities for Division III schools.

“I have kids on my team who were All-Americans 15 years ago who couldn’t make my team now,” Cranston said. “Kids who were Division I players 10 years ago who couldn’t make my team now.”

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More talent leads to more parity

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Plattsburgh State won five titles in a six-year stretch from 2014-19, but there’s been a different champion for each of the last five tournaments.

Norwich won in 2018, Plattsburgh State in 2019, Middlebury in 2022, Gustavus Adolphus in 2023 and Wisconsin-River Falls last year. There were no Division III championships in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.

“Most years there’s maybe three or four teams that could win it all,” Cranston said. “I think this year there’s probably twice that, probably seven or eight teams that could win the whole thing.”

SUNY Oswego athletic director Wendy McManus, the head of the NCAA Division III women’s hockey committee, says smaller schools will continue adding the sport as long as youth participation stays strong.

“I do think eventually it will level off,” McManus said. “I say that because you don’t see California schools or true West Coast schools playing hockey that much. We say ‘West’ is basically Minnesota, Wisconsin.”

That growth has provided welcome opportunities that might not have been available a decade earlier.

For instance, MSOE’s roster includes forward Hannah Baumann of Wausau, Wisconsin, who said she grew up idolizing Marabella and was a big Badgers fan. Baumann used to have to drive an hour to practice because of the relative lack of girls hockey teams.

There now are more girls teams than ever, and some gather in the stands for MSOE’s home games. That has particular meaning for forward Helen Bechthold, who grew up in the Milwaukee area playing for one of those youth programs.

“It’s cool to see they have all-girls teams playing now, because when I was playing, they didn’t have all-girls teams,” said Bechthold, who grew up playing with boys. “It’s great to see. A lot of them were like, ‘You played where we play’ and stuff like that. That definitely makes me happy. I’m happy they have that opportunity.”

AP Sports Writer Dave Campbell and AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow contributed to this report.