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 go ...

conference in the United States. It participates in the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

's Division I as a

hockey ''Hockey'' is a family of List of stick sports, stick sports where two opposing teams use hockey sticks to propel a ball or disk into a goal. There are many types of hockey, and the individual sports vary in rules, numbers of players, apparel, ...

-only conference. As of the most recent 2023–24 NCAA hockey season, the conference is made up of eight teams, with two each in

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, and

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders 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 New York and

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...

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 the 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 environment ...

colleges and one Division I college ( College of the Holy Cross) were removed from their

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

hockey conference (the New England Hockey Conference, 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, 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 in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York, United States. The university enrolls over 16,000 students and offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post on Long I ...

'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, 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

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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

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. A northern Democratic Party (United States), Democrat who believed that the Abolitionism in the United States, abolitio ...

(2017–present) bar:3 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text: Post (2017–present) bar:4 color:barcolor from:07/01/2017 till:end text:

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

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

Champions

New England Women's Hockey Alliance tournament champions by school

National tournament history

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 by conference New England Women's Hockey Alliance