scoring charts. Callahan, with 29 points, was the second-highest-scoring defenseman in ACHA Division 1, while Collins (49 points), DiFilippo (43) and Levesque (38) ranked fourth, seventh and ninth among all DI players. Thanks largely to the four goals per game average those players helped produce, URI returned to national prominence with an eighth ECWHL regular season championship and a 12th bid to the ACHA National Tournament. The following season, 2016–17, despite breakout years from Monica Darby (43 points, good for third in the nation) and rookie Madison Balutowski (28 goals, also third), URI narrowly missed nationals for the second time in three years. Rumors of NCAA status The continued national success of the Rams, along with URI's men's team and Rhode Island's status as the only New England state without NCAA Division I hockey at its flagship university, has led to frequent rumors of the school adding men's and women's hockey as varsity sports. Most of these began with the completion of Boss Arena, a facility considered capable of hosting NCAA hockey, in 2002, an occasion that led to then-athletic director Ron Petro to openly research the concept. Petro told college hockey news site USCHO that "During [the last academic] year, the president [of URI] asked for a survey, so I talked to people from Hockey East, the ECAC and the MAAC as to URI - if we were able to fund it - getting into a league. I made a recommendation to the president in April, but we've been hit with budget cuts as most people have been, so we've delayed any decision on that until we can get a better hold on how to finance a Division I hockey program for men and women, which we know would be way over a million dollars. We are the only state university in New England that doesn't support a team. That would be a goal of mine in the future, but it all comes down to funding." More recently, a wave of conference realignment in NCAA hockey between 2012 and 2014 led to DI men's league Atlantic Hockey maintaining a less-than-ideal odd number of members, 11. Rhode Island's men were involved in discussions to join Atlantic Hockey, with the women possibly receiving varsity status as well by joining AHC's sister league, College Hockey America. However, in September 2014, athletic director Thorr Bjorn torpedoed things by flatly stating that the school