The Pentagonal League is a defunct

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 ...

Division I

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

-only conference. The league was formed by Dartmouth, Harvard,

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

and

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

as a way of determining which team, among the oldest ice hockey programs, was the best. The league is a precursor to the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight school ...

History

The four schools involved can trace the beginning of their ice hockey teams to at least 1905 with Yale's inaugural season in 1895–96 serving as the unofficial dawn of college ice hockey. All four teams ere able to lay claim to a championship since their inception but no formal structure existed to dictate whether one team was superior to another. At the height of the depression, while many programs were in danger of ending, the ice hockey teams at four of the wealthiest institutions in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

were able to stabilize their schedules by forming the Quadrangular League, an outgrowth of the previous Triangular Hockey League. The four team league remained in place until 1943 when both Harvard and Princeton suspended their ice hockey programs due to America's participation in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The league resurfaced after the war and was expanded by the addition of

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

for the 1946–47 season, becoming the Pentagonal League. The Cadets left the league after two seasons and were promptly replaced by

Brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...

. The league continued in this fashion until 1955, a year after the

was formally created. Because the Ivy League never officially supported ice hockey as a sport, the Quadrangular and Pentagonal league are considered informal organizations and not recognized as NCAA conferences.

Members

† both Army and Dartmouth have changed their athletic team names in the years since the Pentagonal League was dissolved.

Membership timeline

DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:01/01/1932 till:06/01/1955 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 Colors = id:men value:rgb(0.6,0.6,1) legend:men id:women value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.5) legend:women id:both value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.8) legend:both id:line value:black id:bg value:white PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:DAR color:men from:06/01/1932 till:06/01/1943 text: Dartmouth (1932–1943, 1946–1955) bar:HAR color:men from:06/01/1932 till:06/01/1943 text: Harvard (1932–1943, 1946–1955) bar:PRI color:men from:06/01/1932 till:06/01/1943 text:

(1932–1943, 1946–1955) bar:YAL color:men from:06/01/1932 till:06/01/1943 text:

(1932–1943, 1946–1955) bar:DAR color:men from:06/01/1946 till:06/01/1955 text: bar:HAR color:men from:06/01/1946 till:06/01/1955 text: bar:PRI color:men from:06/01/1946 till:06/01/1955 text: bar:YAL color:men from:06/01/1946 till:06/01/1955 text: bar:ARM color:men from:06/01/1946 till:06/01/1948 text:

(1946–1948) bar:BRO color:men from:06/01/1948 till:06/01/1955 text:

(1948–1955) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:01/01/1932

References

{{NCAA Division I hockey conferences Defunct NCAA Division I ice hockey conferences Sports in the Eastern United States

History

Members

Membership timeline

See also

References