Building a hockey program from the ground up is no easy feat but it is a challenge that Jeffrey Curto is more than familiar with. Curto will be tasked with building Hiram College’s first men’s ice hockey program after being announced as the head coach this summer.
“It is exciting. It really is,” Curto told The Weekly Villager on Nov. 12. “I think hockey in Ohio is actually growing and I think to have an opportunity to actually bring a brand new college program here to the area is going to be great. I am hoping it generates a lot of interest.”
The first-year coach is still in the process of assembling his roster and while he hopes to have a full team built by April, he is leaving the door open for more changes to take place until August. Time is on his side as the Terriers’ inaugural season will take place in the winter of the 2025-26 school year, coinciding with its Hiram’s first year as a member of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference. In the meantime, Curto is dividing his time between recruiting players and finalizing the schedule not only for next year but the season after that.
It is not the first time that Curto has been involved in bringing hockey to Hiram, as last year he was a part of an attempt to establish a club team at the college but ultimately those plans fell through. Now he is getting another chance and this time, he will have a chance to coach an NCAA-level program.
Having originally been hired for a teaching position at Hiram in 2022, getting a chance to coach college hockey again was not something that Curto thought was in the cards.
“It happened pretty fast so knowing the hockey and knowing the game of hockey I wanted the opportunity,” he said. “Moving into the NCAA level has generated a lot more interest of players so that is the good thing. There are players who are very interested in actually coming so that is who we are building around, those are the players that we have talked to.”
Curto has plenty of experience when it comes to starting a new hockey program, evidenced by his involvement with Eastern Kentucky University’s youth hockey team while he pursued his undergraduate degree in the early 1990s. Although Curto was just a player, he got a first-hand look of what went into creating a hockey program.
“I think for me it is a chance to learn from what we did wrong back then and being older now and wiser, having that ability to actually do it again but at a higher level now,” he noted. “For me, it is very exciting, and it is also a chance to bring the game that Ohio knows and it is the chance to bring it this area of Northeast Ohio.”
Following his playing days, Curto’s coaching career began when he coached in the Livonia Hockey Association in Michigan in 2014. He coached there for two years before returning to his alma matter to serve as an associate head coach for the ACHA team in Richmond, KY for five years before hanging up his whistle to focus his efforts on studying for a PhD.
As Curto continues the recruitment process for the only Division III men’s hockey program in Ohio, he has cast a wide net across Northeast Ohio. Having already built several strong relationships with high school coaches in the area, Curto said that he is leaving no stone unturned in his quest to field the Terriers’ first men’s hockey team.
According to him, those relationships with the high school coaches started last year when Hiram was trying to build a club hockey team.
Curto said that Hiram’s recruitment options may open up even more thanks to a recent resolution passed by the NCAA just two weeks agothat allows players from major junior ice hockey programs such as the Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League to be eligible to receive offers from NCAA schools.
Curto acknowledged that the new influx of talent eligible for recruitment will most likely create a trickle-down effect as the new crop of players will draw the focus of Division I programs, which will result in the players who were in contention for Division I offers but do not receive them having to reassess their options and consider smaller hockey programs at the Division II and Division III level.
“I think it will make hockey overall even better because it opens up the opportunities for other players who may not have had the opportunity,” Curto said.
