Quinnipiac University - Athletics

Athletics

The Quinnipiac Bobcats, previously the Quinnipiac Braves, comprise the school's athletic teams. They play in NCAA Division I in the Northeast Conference, except for the men's and women's ice hockey teams, which are part of ECAC Hockey.

There are seven men's varsity sports and 14 women's varsity sports. There is no football team. The team with the largest following on campus and in the area is the men's ice hockey team under established coach Rand Pecknold, which has been nationally ranked at times; during the 2009–2010 season they entered the top ten of the national polls for the first time. The Quinnipiac women's ice hockey program had their most successful season in the 2009–10 NCAA Division I women's ice hockey season. Quinnipiac University added a women's golf and women's rugby team in the 2010–11 academic year.

In the late 2000s the men's basketball team gained a greater following than before under new head coach Tom Moore, a disciple of UConn Huskies men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun. Both men's and women's ice hockey and basketball teams play at the $52 million, 2007-opened TD Bank Sports Center. The women's lacrosse team has also been quite strong. The athletics program has been under pressures common to other universities, and at the close of the 2008–2009 academic year, men's golf, men's outdoor track and women's volleyball were dropped as a cost-cutting measure, although the last of these was restored (as a result of a Title IX suit).