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.[a] 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.
The women's WCHA tournament seeds all 8 teams, and conducts a standard 8-team tournament at a single site over 4 days. The winner receives the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. WCHA teams won the first 13 NCAA Tournament championships from its inception in 2001.[1]
Minnesota and Minnesota–Duluth were named regular season conference co-champions after finishing tied for first. Minnesota–Duluth got the top seed for the conference tournament.
^The NCAA officially uses the "National Collegiate" term to describe championship events that are open to members of more than one NCAA division. All such NCAA championship events use the term except men's ice hockey, in which the top-level championship is styled as a Division I championship because of the previous existence of a Division II championship in that sport.
^Prior to the NCAA establishing a women's ice hockey championship in the 2000–01 season, the American Women's College Hockey Alliance held a national championship from the 1997–98 season to the 1999–2000 season. Minnesota won the AWCHA championship in 2000.
^ abMinnesota and Minnesota–Duluth were named regular season co-champions in 2010
