The New England Women's Hockey Alliance (NEWHA) is a women's

college ice hockey College ice hockey is played principally in the United States and Canada, though leagues exist outside North America. In the United States, competitive "college hockey" refers to ice hockey played between colleges and universities within the g ...

conference in the United States. It participates in the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

's Division I as a

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

-only conference. As of the current 2022–23 season, the conference is made up of seven teams, with two each in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

and

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

, and one each in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, and

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

. An eighth school in Massachusetts joined for administrative purposes in 2022, but will not start conference play until 2023.

History

Prior to 2017, the women's ice hockey program at Sacred Heart University was a longstanding independent team, part of no conference. In that year, three

NCAA Division II NCAA Division II (D-II) is an intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It offers an alternative to both the larger and better-funded Division I and to the scholarship-free environmen ...

colleges and one Division I college (

College of the Holy Cross The College of the Holy Cross is a private, Jesuit liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts, about 40 miles (64 km) west of Boston. Founded in 1843, Holy Cross is the oldest Catholic college in New England and one of the oldest ...

) were removed from their

NCAA Division III NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their stu ...

hockey conference (the

New England Hockey Conference New England Hockey Conference (formerly the ECAC East) is a college athletic conference which operates in the northeastern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division III as a hockey-only conference. __TOC__ History The New England Ho ...

, formerly the ECAC East). Those teams had previously not been eligible for postseason play, but the conference no longer wanted Division I and II teams playing a conference schedule at all. A sixth team, from

Post University Post University is a private for-profit university in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was founded in 1890 as Post College. From 1990 to 2004 it was affiliated with Teikyo University in Tokyo, Japan and during that time it was named Teikyo Post Unive ...

, announced plans to start playing that year as well. Sacred Heart, Post, and the other four programs (Holy Cross, St. Michael's, St. Anselm, and Franklin Pierce) then formed a scheduling alliance called the New England Women's Hockey Alliance. This was not a formal conference affiliation, just an agreement among the teams to schedule each other during the regular season; officially the teams would be classified as Division I or Division II independents. (NCAA women's ice hockey makes no distinction between Divisions I and II; the NCAA operates a single National Collegiate Championship for women's hockey that includes both Division I and Division II teams, and scholarship limits in that sport are identical in both divisions.) Holy Cross intended to be independent only for one season, applying for and gaining membership in

Hockey East The Hockey East Association, also known as Hockey East, is a college ice hockey conference which operates entirely in New England. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. Hockey East came into existence in 1984 for ...

effective 2018. In that year, the other NEWHA members announced plans to adhere to Division I recruiting rules and offer scholarships, and so applied to the NCAA for the NEWHA to be recognized as an official Division I conference. They also announced the conference would include

Long Island University Long Island University (LIU) is a private university with two main campuses, LIU Post and LIU Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It offers more than 500 academic programs at its main campuses, online, and at multiple non-residential. LIU ...

's team when it began play in 2019. NEWHA was approved as a Division I NCAA conference in September 2019. The conference will need to play at least two seasons with the same six members before being granted an automatic bid to the National Collegiate Championship playoffs in women's ice hockey. The NEWHA expanded to seven members in 2022 with the arrival of

Stonehill College Stonehill College is a Private college, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Easton, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1948 by the Congregation of Holy Cross and is located on ...

, which started a varsity women's hockey team in the 2022–23 season. Stonehill had initially planned to start play in 2021–22, but NCAA-imposed recruiting limits imposed in the wake of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

led the school to delay the team's start by a year. The latest addition to the NEWHA is Assumption University, which joined for administrative purposes on July 1, 2022 in advance of its first season of varsity play in 2023–24. On February 22, 2020, Saint Anselm and Franklin Pierce broke the record for longest NCAA women's hockey game with a five-overtime contest in the NEWHA Playoff Tournament that went 147:24. The game eclipsed the previous record of 144:32 in a 2010 game featuring RPI and Quinnipiac.

Members

Current members

Future member

Former member

Membership timeline

DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy ImageSize = width:750 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:01/01/2017 till:07/01/2027 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.5) id:line value:black id:bg value:white PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:07/01/2018 text: Holy Cross (2017–2018) bar:2 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text:

Franklin Pierce Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation's unity ...

(2017–present) bar:3 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text:

Post Post or POST commonly refers to: *Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries **An Post, the Irish national postal service **Canada Post, Canadian postal service **Deutsche Post, German postal service **Iraqi Post, Ira ...

(2017–present) bar:4 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text:

Sacred Heart The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus ( la, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum) is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devo ...

(2017–present) bar:5 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text: St. Anselm (2017–present) bar:6 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text: St. Michael's (2017–present) bar:7 color:barcolor from:07/01/2019 till:end text:

LIU / ( or ) is an East Asian surname. pinyin: in Mandarin Chinese, in Cantonese. It is the family name of the Han dynasty emperors. The character originally meant 'kill', but is now used only as a surname. It is listed 252nd in the classic text ...

(2019–present) bar:8 color:barcolor from:07/01/2022 till:end text: Stonehill (2022–present) bar:9 color:barcolor from:07/01/2023 till:end text:

Assumption Assumption, in Christianity, refers to the Assumption of Mary, a belief in the taking up of the Virgin Mary into heaven. Assumption may also refer to: Places * Assumption, Alberta, Canada * Assumption, Illinois, United States ** Assumption Town ...

(2023-future) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:1 start:01/01/2017

Champions

References

{{NCAA Division 1 hockey conferences 2017 establishments in the United States Ice hockey in New England Ice hockey in New York (state) NCAA Division I ice hockey conferences New England Women's Hockey Alliance