American Women's College Hockey Alliance

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The American Women's College Hockey Alliance debuted in 1997-98. It was a program funded through the United States Olympic Committee/NCAA Conference Grant Program. The AWCHA organized and developed activities with collegiate women's varsity ice hockey teams, and helped to promote women's ice hockey at all NCAA levels. The first AWCHA Division I National Ice Hockey Championship was held in March 1998. The New Hampshire Wildcats defeated the Brown Bears by a 4-1 score, to become the first recognized national champion in women's college ice hockey. [1] There were two more AWCHA National Championships and then the NCAA became involved. In August 2000, the NCAA announced it would hold its first Division I Women's Ice Hockey National Championship. The Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs captured the first NCAA Division I Women's Ice Hockey Championship, defeating the St. Lawrence Skating Saints by a 4-2 tally on March 25, 2001.

Contents

American Women's College Hockey Alliance champions

Prior to the NCAA establishing a women's ice hockey championship, the AWCHA held a championship from 1997-98 season to 1999-2000 season. Below are those champions.

Awards

Laura Hurd Award

The Laura Hurd Award is given to the AHCA Women’s Ice Hockey College Player of the Year, for the best player in women's Division III (the Patty Kazmaier Award is given for Division I play).

YearWinnerSchoolPosition
2000Sylvia RyanMiddleburyForward
2001Michelle LabbeMiddleburyForward
2002Sarah MoeGustavus AdolphusForward
2003Angela KapusMiddleburyForward/Defense
2004Molly WassermanWilliamsForward
2005Laura HurdElmiraForward
2006Emily QuizonMiddleburyForward
2007Andrea PetersonGustavus AdolphusDefense
2008Danielle BlanchardPlattsburghForward
2009Kayla CoadyElmiraForward
2010Isabel IwachiwTrinityGoaltender

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Related Research Articles

The annual NCAA Women's Ice Hockey Tournament—officially known as the National Collegiate Women's Ice Hockey Championship—is a college ice hockey tournament held in the United States by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to determine the top women's team in the NCAA. The 2020 championship was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Western Collegiate Hockey Association womens champions College athletic conference

The Western Collegiate Hockey Association is a college athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern United States. It participates as a women's ice hockey conference in the NCAA's National Collegiate division, the de facto equivalent of Division I in that sport. Founded in 1951 as a men's ice hockey conference, it added a women's division in 1999, and continued to operate men's and women's divisions through the 2020–21 hockey season. After that season, the WCHA disbanded its men's division after seven of its 10 men's members left the conference to reestablish the Central Collegiate Hockey Association; the WCHA remained in operation as a women-only league. Each team plays 28 league games, each team playing four games against every other, two home games and two road games.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish mens ice hockey

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish men's ice hockey team is the college ice hockey team of the University of Notre Dame, competing at the NCAA Division I level as an associate member of the Big Ten Conference. The Irish play their home games at Compton Family Ice Arena. The head coach of the Fighting Irish is Jeff Jackson, and his assistant coaches are Paul Pooley, Andy Slaggert, and Max Mobley.

Wisconsin Badgers womens ice hockey Womens ice hockey team of the University of Wisconsin–Madison

The Wisconsin Badgers women's ice hockey team is the hockey team that represents the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

New Hampshire Wildcats womens ice hockey

The New Hampshire Wildcats represent the University of New Hampshire. They have won five ECAC championships between 1986 and 1996. When the Wildcats joined Hockey East, they won four Hockey East titles from 2006 to 2009. The Wildcats have more wins than any other women's ice hockey program at 668 in its first 32 years. The Wildcats went undefeated in their initial 74 games (73-0-1) spanning the 1978 through 1982 seasons. A UNH goaltender has been declared Hockey East Goaltending Champion in the first six years of the league's existence. From 2007 to 2009, UNH hosted NCAA Tournament Regional home games.

Minnesota Golden Gophers womens ice hockey

The Minnesota Golden Gophers women's ice hockey team plays for the University of Minnesota at the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis. The team is one of the members of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in Division I. The Golden Gophers have won six NCAA Championships as well as the final American Women's College Hockey Alliance Championship. In the WCHA, they have also been regular season champions 11 times and tournament champions 7 times. In addition to their overall success as a competitive team, the Gophers have also been ranked in the nation's top two teams for attendance since becoming a varsity sport, and the team holds the second largest single-game attendance record for women's collegiate hockey, drawing 6,854 fans for the first Minnesota women's hockey game on November 2, 1997. The team also holds the distinction of having the longest winning streak in women's or men's college hockey at 62 games from February 17, 2012 to November 17, 2013, winning back-to-back NCAA titles during the stretch.

Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs womens ice hockey American collegiate womens ice hockey program

The Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs women's ice hockey team plays for the University of Minnesota Duluth at the AMSOIL Arena in Duluth, Minnesota. The team is a member of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the Division I tier. The Bulldogs have won five NCAA Championships.

Harvard Crimson womens ice hockey

The Harvard Crimson women's ice hockey team represents Harvard University in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I women's hockey. Harvard competes as a member of the ECAC Conference and plays its home games at the Bright Hockey Center in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ohio State Buckeyes womens ice hockey College ice hockey team

The Ohio State Buckeyes women's ice hockey team represents Ohio State University in NCAA Division I competition in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) conference. The team plays in Columbus, Ohio at The Ohio State Ice Rink, located on the Ohio State campus.

The Brown Bears women’s ice hockey program is an NCAA Division I ice hockey team that represents Brown University. The Bears play at the Meehan Auditorium in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown women's hockey is the oldest women's hockey program in the United States. It was the first collegiate women's ice hockey program in the United States, started in 1964. The team was led from 1989 to 2011 by Head Coach Digit Murphy, who became the winningest coach in Division I women's ice hockey history during her 18th season at Brown (2006–2007).

The Princeton Tigers women's ice hockey team represents Princeton University in the ECAC Hockey conference in the NCAA Division I women's ice hockey. They play at the Hobey Baker Memorial Rink. In the 2019-2020 season, they won their first ECAC championship, defeating #1 ranked Cornell by a score of 3-2 in overtime.

Winny Brodt-Brown is an American ice hockey player. She was the first winner of the Minnesota Ms. Hockey Award in 1996. She won a silver medal at the 2000 and 2001 IIHF Women's World ice hockey championships.

New Hampshire Wildcats mens ice hockey

The New Hampshire Wildcats men's ice hockey team is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I college ice hockey program that represents the University of New Hampshire. The Wildcats are a member of Hockey East. They play at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, New Hampshire.

History of womens ice hockey in the United States

The history of women's ice hockey in the United States can be traced back to the early 20th century. In the 1920s, the Seattle Vamps competed in various hockey tournaments. In 1916, the United States hosted an international hockey tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, that featured Canadian and American women's hockey teams.

Katey Stone is one of the most successful coaches in the history of Division I women’s ice hockey. Stone has accumulated 494 victories and has coached 25 seasons as a head coach with the Harvard Crimson. Stone was the third coach in women’s college hockey history to win 300 games.

Mike McShane is a college men's ice hockey coach. He ranks ninth all-time among NCAA men's ice hockey coaches with 653 wins in 30 years as a head coach. As the head coach at Norwich University since 1996, he has led his teams to the Frozen Four nine times and NCAA Division III national championships in 2000, 2003, 2010 and 2017.

Laura Halldorson is an American retired women's college ice hockey player and head coach. She was the first head coach of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers Women's Hockey team, leading the new team to national prominence in her ten seasons. Her Minnesota record was 278–67–22, a winning percentage of .787. During that time, the Gophers won three national championships and four Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) championships, averaged 28 wins per season, and appeared in eight of ten national championship tournaments.

NCAA Division III women's ice hockey is a college ice hockey competition governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as part of the NCAA Division III. Sixty-seven teams competed in NCAA Division III women’s hockey across eight conferences in the 2019–20 season.

The Arizona State Sun Devils men's ice hockey team is the college ice hockey team that represents Arizona State University. It plays its home games at the ASU Multi-Purpose Arena in Tempe, beginning in the 2022-23 season.

Many of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) schools developed club teams over the years, and eventually varsity hockey programs at the Division III level of the NCAA. Most of these varsity teams were established in the late 1990s. After Title IX gave equal access to women's sports, the MIAC, being one of the oldest conferences in the NCAA, finally had enough programs to offer women's ice hockey as a conference starting with the 1998–99 season. Six member programs began play at the time.

References

  1. "About GirlsWomens' Hockey". Alaska State Hockey. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
  2. "AHCA MAJOR Awards". American Hockey Coaches Association. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 23 June 2010.