Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Cornell Daily Sun
Submit a Tip
Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025

Screenshot-2025-03-11-at-10.32.51 PM

The 25-Year History of NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey

Reading time: about 6 minutes

This story is part of The Sun’s 2025 NCAA Hockey supplement. To view the rest of the supplement, click here

As the country gears up for the 2025 NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament, seeds are assigned and brackets are made, it can be easy to forget how far the sport has come in a short time.

The NCAA formally sanctioned women’s hockey in 2000, and the national tournament has occurred every year since (except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) In a quarter century, the tournament has grown from two to four rounds, and the number of women’s hockey conferences has increased from three to five.

Due to its unique history, the structure of collegiate women’s hockey may look unusual to fans of the men’s leagues, as the current women’s tournament features an 11-team bracket in contrast to the 16-team men’s bracket. The current conferences were formed rapidly and have shifted dramatically in the 50 years that have passed since varsity teams began to organize.

In 1965, Brown University created the first American collegiate women’s ice hockey team, the Pembroke Pandas, who made their on-ice debut in 1966. Brown lacked a collegiate rival, instead playing against community-organized teams until 1971, when Cornell’s program first took shape – 72 years after its men’s team.

The group of 23 women was unable to practice in Lynah Rink and struggled to obtain equipment and funds due to a lack of recognition as a varsity sport until the 1972-1973 season. At this point, competition was limited to the Pandas, the Red and several Canadian schools including McGill and Erindale (now the University of Toronto at Mississauga).

Snippets from The Sun's 1971-1972 coverage of women's hockey

After Cornell’s debut, women’s hockey programs began cropping up with greater frequency, almost exclusively in the Northeastern United States. The Red’s 1974-1975 schedule introduced nine new American collegiate competitors to the rotation, and by 1976 the first Ivy League tournament was organized. Cornell won 10-1 against Yale and 3-2 against Brown to take the first-ever title.

Following closely behind was the beginning of the ECAC championship, initially in the form of an invitational in 1984. It wasn’t until 1996 that an official post-season ECAC tournament began.

The ever-growing list of teams, in an attempt to organize a national tournament without being sanctioned by the NCAA, coalesced under the American Women’s College Hockey Alliance from 1997-2000. The AWCHA received funding from the United States Olympic Committee to host a yearly championship, which debuted in 1998 when New Hampshire bested Brown to win the first-ever national collegiate women’s ice hockey championship.

1999 heralded the introduction of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, bringing women’s hockey to seven schools in the Midwest. As the sport’s limiting factor up to this point was a lack of teams (in 1998, about 10 more schools needed to adopt programs in order for the NCAA to sanction women’s ice hockey), the WCHA and ECAC put in a combined effort to gain National Collegiate recognition. In August of 2000, it succeeded, and the national division of women’s ice hockey was created.

The first-ever NCAA tournament, dubbed the inaugural women’s Frozen Four, took place in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Mariucci Arena. No. 4 St. Lawrence overturned No. 1 Dartmouth in the first round, only to fall to No. 2 Minnesota Duluth, the lone WCHA representative, in the final.

Two additional conferences, Hockey East and College Hockey America, formed in 2002, with Hockey East pulling schools such as Northeastern University, Boston University and the University of Maine from the ECAC. The introduction of more competition allowed for the 2005 expansion of the tournament to include eight teams. The top four seeds hosted quarterfinal matches to earn a spot in the Frozen Four.

The champions of the ECAC, Hockey East and WCHA conference tournaments received automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament, while the remaining slots were filled by at-large bids.

Cornell made its first tournament appearance in 2010, beating Boston University and No. 1 Mercyhurst before falling to No. 2 Minnesota Duluth in the championship. The Red made the next four brackets before facing a two-year drought.

Starting in 2015, at-large bids were extended to CHA conference winners. Up to this point, Mercyhurst was the only team in the conference to have made a national tournament appearance.

Several Division ll schools desiring to compete in postseason play (there is still no Division ll tournament and they could not compete with Division lll teams) formed the New England Women’s Hockey Alliance with Division l schools Holy Cross and Sacred Heart University in 2017.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down both men’s and women’s postseasons before NCAA tournaments, the women’s championship bracket was restructured to the version seen today. In the 2022 iteration, seven at-large bids are offered along with the four automatic qualifiers. Teams are assigned seeds by the NCAA committee, and three first-round games occur to decide the opponents of the first, second and third seeds in the quarterfinals.

Women's hockey saw radical changes to its postseason competition after the pandemic. (Jason Wu/Sun Staff Photographer)

Beginning in 2023, the winner of NEWHA was granted an automatic bid to the tournament. In both seasons since then, no NEWHA competitor has advanced past the first round, and in the 2024-2025 season, teams in the conference had a 1-42-1 record against out-of-conference opponents.

In 2024, the most recent alteration to the field occurred when the CHA merged with the men’s Atlantic Hockey Association to form Atlantic Hockey America.

Despite the NCAA tournament growing to encompass 44 teams across five conferences, only five teams have earned the championship trophy, with all but one (Clarkson) being a part of the WCHA. 

This year, Cornell looks to change that. The Red, ranked third in the nation and the holder of the ECAC championship title, will begin the tournament automatically in the quarterfinals.

After Sacred Heart and Minnesota Duluth duke it out at 6 p.m. Thursday at Lynah Rink, the Red will take the ice with the victor at 4 p.m. Saturday, hoping to kickstart an NCAA run that ends with the trophy.


Alexis Rogers

Alexis Rogers is the sports editor on the 143rd editorial board. She is in the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts & Sciences, and she can be reached at arogers@cornellsun.com.


Read More