Hiram College’s pending move to the President’s Athletic Conference for the 2025-26 school year will also see significant changes in the its athletic program. The Terriers will be adding three new sports when they join the PAC in women’s lacrosse, women’s bowling and men’s ice hockey.
“We are growing at a pretty fast pace,” Athletic Director Scott Pohlman told The Weekly Villager on July 9. “We are looking at sports that fit our demographic and we feel we can succeed at recruiting talented incoming classes.”
It has been three years since Hiram College had a NCAA-sponsored women’s lacrosse program. It was discontinued in the winter of 2021 and made a club sport only. Pohlman acknowledged with the resurgence of the Terriers’ men’s lacrosse program and the highly anticipated move to the PAC, it was the perfect time to bring women’s lacrosse back.
With the addition of three new sports, Pohlman said that Hiram expects its enrollment numbers to significantly increase in the next few years. Although the new student-athletes who come are being specifically recruited for those sports, Hiram is a big enough school to welcome in a larger group of student-athletes and non-student athletes.
“You have to get bigger in today’s world,” said Pohlman. “We grow a little bit through athletics, we grow a little bit through our academic offerings and it just is a good match.”
“We do have some interest from some of the female students on campus,” he noted. “They have a club lacrosse sport and joining the PAC which has women’s lacrosse, it just seemed like a good time to bring it back.”
The Terriers have yet to select a coach and are still interviewing candidates. Pohlman said it would be good to pick a coach at least a year before Hiram transfers to the PAC so that coach can have enough time to assemble a recruiting class, but he is not putting a firm deadline on it.
“We are looking for somebody who understands the game and understands how to recruit,” Pohlman added. “We would like to hire a coach sooner than later and bring that coach in this year to give the coach a full year to recruit and then start competing in the 25-26 season.”
While women’s lacrosse is already an existing sport in the PAC, women’s bowling and men’s ice hockey is not recognized in the conference so Hiram is searching for other conferences to join for each sport. Hiram has already found a home ice for the team, as they will compete at The Pond Ice Rink & Sports Complex in Auburn Township, home of several local Northeast Ohio high school hockey programs.
The Terriers have already hired the first men’s ice hockey coach in school history, Assistant Professor of Sports Management Dr. Jeffrey Curto, who has was a member of the first hockey team at Eastern Kentucky University in the 1990s and was a member of the 2017 coaching staff that led the team to its first Bourbon Barrell Trophy.
“He is a coach that is already at Hiram and understands our demographic,” Pohlman said. “He also has an extensive background in this part of the state with club hockey, so he has a lot of ties and a lot of connections to the sport.”
Pohlman said it is undetermined how many games the team will play during itsinaugural season but acknowledged that the team will at least play the mandatory minimum amount of games required to qualify as an NCAA-sponsored sport. As of this moment, Hiram is the only Division III school in the State of Ohio to have a men’s ice hockey team.
The new women’s bowling team also has already found its head coach in Professional Academic Advisor Brooke Davidson, who previously served as the Vice President and President of the Youngstown State Bowling Club.
“She has a background as she had a club bowling team at Youngstown State University and she was in charge of the club bowling team,” Pohlman said. “She is a bowler herself and is used to setting up matches and teaching but again it was a good fit with an in-house person.”
Pohlman said that Hiram plans for its women’s bowling team to have its home lanes at the SkyLane Bowling Alley in Garrettsville.
As Hiram begins a new chapter in its athletic program for its upcoming move to a new conference, it will also continue to expand its athletic programs. Pohlman did not rule out that other new athletic programs could also be on the horizon.
