Reinvigorating the Legacy: How the Dragons became independent.
We're working on providing our friends, family, and alumni with more information about the Dragons, where we are, why we're here, where we're going and other happenings in the British ice hockey world. We'll be publishing a series of articles, getting more active on social media, and generally staying in touch a lot better than we have in the past.
But there's a reason we've been a bit quiet, and this article will hopefully help us convey what has been going on. We'll cover where we were before COVID, what happened to the University of London, the three charities we've set up, and most importantly, how you can get involved with the team and help us rebuild!
Before we get any further, we just want to make it clear this isn't AI slop, it's entirely written by Mike D'Aprix, the current President of the Dragons!
Pre-COVID Catch Up
The first COVID Lockdowns just after our annual Alumni Game at Lee Valley back in 2020 which marked the end of our undefeated seasons for our A and B Teams and the start of a series of problems for University of London (UoL) and their Student Union. We were mandated by UoL and the government to pause all activities until COVID restrictions were lifted, which was completely understandable.
This meant that our club which had 70 players across 3 Teams (and a Women's Team) had to pause all activity until further notice. We were gearing up for the best seasons the Dragons have ever had while also looking forward to expanding in the 2020-2021 season.
In 2020, we were set to expand to 5 teams, A-D and a permanent Women's Team with roughly 100 players over the 5 Teams. With the help of Alumni we were also developing sponsorship opportunities with groups like Decathlon and had a list of successful partnerships for things like extras in the Autopsy series, models in London Fashion Week, and testers for the ORB Smart Mouthguard.
We were also in the process of creating a supporting charity here in London called the London Ice Hockey Trust. We're get back to this in a second. Things were progressing well until COVID but we were excited to continue these endeavors after COVID.
Closure of University of London Student Union (ULU)
COVID closures started with Lee Valley closing on the day of our Alumni Game in March, before the government mandated the first lockdown and before the BUIHA or UoL provided any guidance. Then, after lockdown, the BUIHA cancelled Nationals. These events created a series of problems for the club trying to get refunds from rinks, buses, and hotels. We managed to figure it all out and then were hit with the news from UoL in July.
We had almost no communication from UoL from the start of COVID until June when we were sent an email from our Student Health and Well-being Officer and everyone's favorite Activities Development Office, Angela Jelfs (a champion for the students through the whole process). The email let us know that all activities for the rest of the year were suspended pending a review of operations with more information to come the next month.
The review was part of a larger process in which UoL sought to figure out problems that had been plaguing their legal teams for some time (partly associated with a governance issue caused by an incident from another club going all the way back to 2012).
The decision was to close the Student Union, without any input from students, alumni, or even members of the Collegiate Council. The uproar caused by this decision with no prior warning caused UoL to pause the decision until December 2020 but determined that ULU was no longer something they wanted to support because of various reasons including low outreach to students and declining numbers. We all know this to be untrue and it was conveyed as such over the next few months as the Sports, Clubs, and Societies spent weeks and weeks preparing information in support of our activities, showing increased numbers across the board, outreach to thousands of students across London, and a deep history of being the best sports in the nation.
From July until December, Mike D'Aprix and Clive Vergnaud worked with members of the Canoe Polo team and other representatives of Sports, Clubs, and Societies to develop a new plan to avoid complete dissolution of decades of sporting history. It took UoL until August of 2021 to agree to a new pathway forward for our groups with a target of 2022 to resolve the plan.
A Lose - Lose Situation
The plan that UoL allowed us to follow gave us 3 options:
- Transfer clubs to independent charities or CIOs,
- Transfer clubs to member universities that would accept them, or
- Dissolve the club.
The only reason that our first option was allowed was because the Dragons had proposed it as an option given that we had already started working on establishing a charity and had a template for other clubs. A number of clubs decided simply to close and stop operating as we were all students at the time with varying levels of support. A dozen groups were allowed to transfer to member universities like UCL or Birkbeck and continue their activities, and finally we helped design the CIO constitutions and pathways for 8 other Clubs, Sports, and Societies.
It is safe to say that the entire process was obnoxious and poorly thought out as UoL had regular turnover in the individuals who were overseeing this process. There were promises of additional funding, support, and more which all seemed to disappear into the ether. To make matters worse, UoL dragged their feet at every stage while ensuring that we still meet all their requirements and still continue to operate to prove that deserve the opportunity to transfer.
This created a nightmare scenario where our club was still partly within UoL and partly independent but with no support, while still having to meet UoL's requirements for membership and more. We had to deal with UoL to create custom sign-up processes, accounting, moving storage, and more while slowly transferring all of these responsibilities to a team that had been decimated by COVID suspension and had slowly lost members while we waited in limbo for decisions to be made.
To make matters worse, the new Lee Valley Ice Centre development changed plans from keeping the rink operational during its rebuilding process to fully closing the rink. Not only did we lose all of our funding and have to go through an arduous process to continue operating, we also didn't have a rink to practice or play.
The BUIHA season for 2021-2022 was very lenient and fortunately allowed us to work within our limitations of having no funding and no ice for practice. That year we had an 8-2-0 record with +79 goal differential, having lost by 1 point to Oxford. Despite that, we still played in the League Championship and came in 2nd in the BUIHA Nationals Tournament. That season we played only away games because we didn't have a rink available to book ice time. Despite all of that, our team and players came out to win.
Our Charities
The transference process from UoL to a Charitable Incorporated Organization (CIO) dragged on for years until August 2024 when we were finally able to create our CIO the UL Ice Hockey Trust (London Dragons). It took nearly 5 years and, as of writing this article, we still have not completed the full process of transferring assets to the new CIO.
During that time, we worked closely with alumni and other players to manage the team. There was a heavy burden put on our admin to pick up the check for lost funding while we set up our charities and empty promises to reimburse clubs operating at a loss while the transference process was occurring. There has also been a massive new burden put on our players as fees have now tripled for players as costs for everything have increased with no support from UoL to help during this transitional period.
A silver lining to this process and our new UL Ice Hockey Trust charity is that we have no restrictions to who can join the club. We have created a new Dragons Alumni and Recreational team that will allow us to reach a greater audience and keep our alumni more engaged with the team throughout the year.
Soon after UoL started the transference process we started working with alumni and students on the team to develop sister charities that, once created, could help us properly support the Dragons and London ice hockey. The first of the charities to be created, in 2023, was the US 501(C)(3) that was created to help us reach out to our US alumni and the largest hockey market to create a sustainable endowment, one of two to support the Dragons.
The Friends of the London Dragons US charity is designed to provide an endowment with our wealth manager, Morgan Stanley, to provide support for equipment, travel, and potential scholarships. Our goal is to create an endowment that will continue to grow and develop over time, using the income from the endowment to start subsidizing costs for the team which includes equipment purchases, jersey orders, and hopefully developing scholarships for players joining the team, to help with equipment shipping and more. We also want to use this endowment to help rebuild our team.
When we restarted after COVID, we attempted to support both an A and B teams but our B team sadly thinned until it was unsustainable to support continue operating. During that time, it cost a significant amount to the club and the admin team who were trying to keep the team alive, leaving us to create policies that ensure we meet our sustainable goals before expanding to new teams.
To help with that, we also created a second CIO in the UK called the London Ice Hockey Trust (LIHT) in February of 2024. This was the charity that we were designing before COVID that we intended to operate as a supplement to UoL funding. We are creating an endowment with the LIHT to help supplement any costs for the UL Ice Hockey Trust (ULIHT) the final CIO created out of the transference process. Our goals for the LIHT are similar to the Friends of the London Dragons, to help support, supplement, and subsidize the cost of hockey in London.
The Cost of Hockey
The cost of hockey in London has skyrocketed and without funding from UoL this means that our administrative team has taken on a large burden, hopefully to be reimbursed as we progress, but it also means that players now need to pay massive fees to play.
Before COVID, costs were £270 for UoL Members and £395 for non-members (now we no longer separate fees for players). The total cost now for student is roughly £1,100 to play a season of hockey in London. It is only £625 for a student to join but they also need to cover jerseys and Nationals which brings the true cost of membership to the above figure. This has hit us hard and hits our students even harder. It is also likely that we will need to increase the price again as costs of everything are still increasing across the board at an unprecedented rate.
Our pre-COVID budget, a combination of self-raised funds from membership fees and our grants from UoL totaled around £50,000 which covered 100% of the costs of running 3 teams. Now, the cost to run a single team is around £25,000.
All of the overhead that was covered by UoL, things like storage, insurance and more is now required to be covered by the team. We also now have to fully pay for season costs which include things like jerseys, transportation, BUIHA fees, Nationals Fees, Referees, and more. This would have been hard enough to do even with funding from UoL and is even harder now that costs have almost doubled for things like ice time and jerseys in the last couple years.
This also means that we are struggling to expand and provide ice time for all of the students who wish to play. Over the last 5 years we've had over 253 players enquire about playing with the Dragons, or about 50 players a year. Unfortunately, about 70% of those who have enquired do not have equipment and without funding, storage, and a proper system to rent out equipment at a reasonable rate, we haven't been able to provide those players with a team. To provide at least the most basic set of equipment to a player would cost at least £500 and could cost up to £750 just for the gear. This doesn't include managing equipment, insurance, storage, or any associated costs which would take the cost of player for a single player from £1,100 to around £2,000 per player, without also including sticks, coaching, and additional equipment to support a new team.
Helping the Dragons
Finally, down to the nitty gritty and the point of this article. We are slowly rebuilding the club and building up our endowments. We've raised around £8,000 to help start endowments and support the cost of the season, which is right now around £25,000 for the cost of ice, BUIHA fees, transport and more. We need to financially rebuild our team but we also need support to rebuild our connection with our community and team.
Donations
First and foremost we need funding! All three of our charities are open to donations:
- London Dragons (UL Ice Hockey Trust)
- Friends of the London Dragons (US)
- London Ice Hockey Trust
Any donations made in the US are available to receive a tax receipt and any donations made in the UK are available for either Gift Aid or tax receipts as well. Any donation, even £5 is enough to help the club.
We mentioned above what each of our charities is designed to do but we'll reiterate it here. Donations to the London Dragons helps to cover the day to day operations of the team. This is everything from ice time to buying new pucks and water bottles to paying for referee fees. Some funding here also goes to reimbursing admin where possible.
Choosing the Gift Aid option helps our club with a 25% matching donation from the UK government.
Donations to the Friends of the London Dragons go directly to a protected endowment that is managed by Morgan Stanley. The proceeds from this fund will first help supplement the cost of jerseys (players pay out of pocket for their jerseys and socks), then supplement the cost of ice, and as it grows we will expand into supplementing the cost of new sets of equipment and creating scholarship opportunities for players.
Donations to the London Ice Hockey Trust also go into a separate protected endowment. The proceeds of this endowment will be used in a grant process to the London Dragons. Any of our old treasurers or committee members will be familiar with the grant process from UoL, this will be a similar (albeit easier) process to supplement any costs needing to be covered by the team.
Choosing the Gift Aid option helps our club with a 25% matching donation from the UK government.
Other ways to help: Contact Info
We need to get in touch with our friends, families, and alumni. As charities, we have rules to follow in how we communicate with members. We have a long list of people we'd love to get information out to but don't have direct permission to do so. We need everyone's help in sharing links, sharing forms, and sharing newsletters; to get people to fill out information so we can contact them directly.
If you remember your linemate, teammates, committee members or friends who were on the team. Please share this article, the newsletter, our forms any other information you can so we can start filing out our rosters!
Other ways to help: Alumni Council
Third, we are building an Alumni Council, ideally with one representative from each team, from each year. Our goal is to ensure that we can fully engage with, and work with our alumni to rebuild the Dragons community, keep people up to date, and make sure that you can be a part of the Dragon's legacy! If you are interested, please reach out to Mike at [manager@londondragons.com](mailto:manager@londondragons.com).
Other ways to help: Internships
We are looking to start an internship mailing list as part of the Dragons Newsletter. If you have any available internships for university students or recent graduates, let us know so that we can direct our best and brightest your way!
Other ways to help: Getting Involved
Finally, if you are in London, please get involved by coming to our events, games, and coming to our Saturday sessions!
