Western Collegiate Hockey Association
| Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) |
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|---|---|
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| Established | 1951 |
| Association | NCAA |
| Division | Division I |
| Members | 16 |
| Sports fielded | Ice hockey (men's: 10 teams; women's: 8 teams) |
| Region | Midwestern United States, Alaska, and Alabama |
| Former names | Midwest Collegiate Hockey League (1951–53) Western Intercollegiate Hockey League (1953–58) |
| Headquarters | Edina, Minnesota |
| Commissioner | Bill Robertson |
| Website | http://www.wcha.com |
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The Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) is a college athletic conference which operates over a wide area of the Midwestern, Western, and Southeastern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as an ice hockey-only conference.
WCHA member teams have won a record 36 men's NCAA hockey championships, most recently in 2011 by the Minnesota–Duluth Bulldogs. A WCHA team has also finished as the national runner-up a total of 28 times. WCHA teams also won the first 13 NCAA women's titles, which were first awarded in 2001.
The league was founded in 1951 as the Midwest Collegiate Hockey League (MCHL), then was known as the Western Intercollegiate Hockey League (WIHL) until 1958. The 1958–59 season was one of independence for members as a result of recruiting techniques by some teams. The current Western Collegiate Hockey Association was founded for the 1959–60 season. The 2005 NCAA Frozen Four hockey tournament finals were noteworthy when all four teams came from the WCHA.
WCHA teams also won the first 13 NCAA women's titles, which were first awarded in 2001. In 2006, WCHA member Wisconsin was the first school to capture both the men's and women's Division I ice hockey championships in the same season.
The men's regular season conference champion is awarded the MacNaughton Cup, while the league's tournament champion winning the WCHA Final Five takes home the Broadmoor Trophy.
On March 22, 2011, Minnesota and Wisconsin announced that their men's teams planned to leave the league in order to form a hockey Big Ten Conference in 2013–14, along with Penn State, which would start a varsity hockey program in 2012–13, and Central Collegiate Hockey Association members Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State.
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