Ivy League cancels winter season, including women’s hockey

Four months after postponing sports for all of 2020, the Ivy League schools announced today they are cancelling the winter sports season, including women’s hockey, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This impacts six ECAC schools: Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

The other teams in the conference are Clarkson, Colgate, Quinnipiac, RPI, St. Lawrence, and Union. The ECAC has not released a statement in response as of publication.

On Nov. 5, Clarkson and Quinnipiac announced a four-game series of non conference games, making them the only two teams in the ECAC to have released any plans.

Another wrinkle for the ECAC is that four of their schools - Clarkson, Union, St. Lawrence University, and RPI - belong to Liberty League (DIII) in all sports other than hockey. The Liberty League announced the cancellation of their season earlier this week, prompting RIT - whose women’s hockey team plays in the CHA but is part of the Liberty League for all other sports as well - to cancel their women’s hockey season. At the time, none of the four ECAC teams had made a decision about hockey yet.

The Ivy Leagues were the first schools to shut down athletics at the beginning of the pandemic in March.

Elsewhere in Division I hockey, Hockey East announced their schedule, and the WCHA released the first month of their schedule. Both are set to start on Nov. 20.