German team facing funding cut after failing to qualify for fifth place game

After losing to Finland in a classification game on Sunday, the German women's hockey team faces the prospect of finishing no higher than seventh in Sochi, thereby putting the future of the program in doubt.

According to IIHF.com, the German Ministry of Defence had threatened to cut its funding for the Army’s women’s hockey program if the team did not secure at least a sixth-place finish at the Olympics.

“If we lose the funding I don’t have a job any more,” says Germany’s leading scorer in Sochi, Franziska Busch. “Right now I’m in the army’s sports program, but if I lose that I’d have to find a regular job somewhere else.”

Busch, along with eleven of her teammates, currently has an arrangement with the military which enables her to devote 70 percent of her time to hockey, while spending the other 30 percent of her working hours in uniform.

Germany has one game left, which, with a victory over Japan, would put them in seventh place. Time will tell if it's enough to convince the power-that-be in the military to help sustain the program.