The MSU hockey team defeated Michigan this weekend, but it wasn’t the only MSU skaters to hit the ice.

The No. 2 MSU women’s ice hockey club traveled to Marquette this weekend for two games against Northern Michigan.

The Spartans have already clinched the No. 1 seed in the central division of the American Collegiate Hockey Association. The ACHA is the collegiate club hockey league for men and women.

This is the first year the team has been ranked. It will travel to Atlanta as a top seed, March 1-3 to compete in ACHA Nationals.

But the team is still trying to obtain one more goal, becoming a varsity sport.

The team was formed in 1995 and was the first women’s club hockey team in the state. In 1996, the team sought to obtain varsity status, but was denied.

There are 69 schools with varsity women’s hockey teams from Division I to Division III.

The only university in Michigan that has a varsity women’s hockey team is Wayne State. This season MSU lost its only scheduled contest against Wayne State, 16-0.

That team competes in the Central Collegiate Women’s Hockey Association, which includes all teams from Michigan that are in the men’s CCHA, except for Ferris State University.

Craig Payment, the coach of the MSU women’s hockey team, said the team is in the process of building support as well as a successful team, and not worrying about varsity status.

“We’re trying to win here,” the kinesiology graduate student said. “It’s out of our hands.”

There are two MSU teams, the green team, which is the competitive team, and the white team, which is the developmental team. This is Payment’s first season as head coach of the green team.

He said the current sports budget being so tight, plays a big role in their attempt to become a varsity sport.

“From my angle, I don’t know what will happen as far as a time frame,” he said.

Payment said he would like to see varsity status become a reality in the next four or five years. The popularity of women’s hockey continues to grow, he said. The gold-medal win by the U.S. women’s hockey team in the 1998 Winter Olympics has increased the popularity of the sport.

Renee Fornes, a physiology junior, plays defense and is the captain of the women’s team - she’s been playing hockey since the fifth grade, along with her two older sisters.

Fornes said the ultimate goal for the club sport is to become varsity. She said it’s something, she’s been thinking about since she came to MSU.

“As a freshman I was hoping it would be varsity by my junior or senior year,” she said. “Now we’re telling freshmen maybe when you’re juniors or seniors.”

The Mackinaw City native’s two sisters, Danielle and Aimee, both went out of state to play varsity hockey at Maine’s Colby College and Wisconsin, respectively.

Fornes said gaining varsity status would give players like herself more incentive, because they will be playing at a higher level.

“I only work out when I have to, otherwise I don’t,” she said.

She also said a lack of facilities and scheduling times for games and practices need to be addressed. The team currently practices three times a week for a little over an hour.

John Munn, president of Ice Breakers, which serves as a booster club for the women’s team, said the nonprofit organization applied to get the women’s team varsity status a year and a half ago.

Munn, a distant relative to Clarence L. “Biggie” Munn, who the MSU ice arena is named after, said the response from the athletics department then was that it wasn’t in the budget.

Munn said there were various numbers that were discussed about the cost, but there wasn’t a concrete figure.

“Right now it’s a matter of trying to get more attention, more community support and involvement,” Munn said.

Munn said the organization is looking to raise $250,000 to $500,000 to help finance the sport if it does become a varsity sport.

Munn said he set up an account in January to start saving money, so no exact figures were known.

“This is a slow process,” he said. “And we’ve grown by leaps and bounds over the last six years.”

The Lansing realtor said the group will hopefully apply again next summer or fall.

Officials from the athletics department could not be reached for comment.

The team will host Wisconsin’s junior varsity team Friday and Saturday at Munn Ice Arena. This will be the final homestand for the team.