The Middle Atlantic Conference is taking a big step forward this winter as it embarks on its first season with automatic bids to the NCAA Division Three men’s and women’s hockey tournaments.

With the addition of the Misericordia University men and the Hood University women to the conference lineup, the MAC now includes six men’s and six women’s teams, the minimum number for automatic qualifier (AQ) status as of this year (the previous minimum had been seven teams.

In addition, Neumann University and Wilkes University will be aligned with the MAC as associate members for both sports.

The men’s alignment will include Alvernia, Arcadia, Kings, Lebanon Valley, Misericordia, Neumann, Stevenson, and Wilkes.

The women’s alignment will feature Alvernia, Arcadia, Hood, King’s, Lebanon Valley, Stevenson. Neumann, and Wilkes

“I think it’s an important step forward,” said MAC Executive Director Megan Morrison. “We don’t have that many sports around the conference that we aren’t able to provide a home for in terms of the regular season and postseason and access to the [NCAA tournament].

Hockey was one of those where a number of our institutions had to play in a single-sport conference.

“Not only to grow the sport of hockey but to have our schools have hockey under MAC umbrella, which has a little bit wider-recognized than a single-sport conference, we certainly thought it was the right move.”

The conference will play a triple-round-robin schedule (21 conference games) followed by playoff semifinals and finals.

“This certainly allows them to have a little bit less in travel expense,” Morrison said. “Nobody loved a triple round robin but I think it’s a great place for us to start. And with everyone being so conscious on campus of expense it’s a win in that way too.”

Morrison says the realignment of the conference offers some recruiting advantages
“We’re still a young conference when it comes to hockey,” she said, “and programs that have hockey, but now, having access to the NCAA championships probably provides them with a better chance of winning a conference championship and going to the NCAA than potentially where our schools were playing previously (in the United Collegiate Hockey Conference). So, that’ certainly an upside.”

Morrison notes that some of the freshman hockey players enrolling at MAC schools will be entering college after playing junior hockey and thus will be older than the typical college freshman. She says the older first-year students offer a unique viewpoint,

“Oftentimes, institutions tell us that older students bring a different perspective,” she said, “more experience to campuses, which is a good thing.”

The conference first sponsored ice hockey during the 2017-18 season. Morrison, who assumed her post in July of 2020, says achieving AQ status was something conference administrators had been looking forward to.

“It certainly was I think in the back of the minds of all of our schools that have started hockey over the last several years,” she said. And probably in the back of their minds when they started hockey and knew they were going to have to play in another conference.

 “but the one of the benefits of being a large conference is to come together, and schools can say ‘We’re thinking about ice hockey’ and other schools can plan that way and that can be something a whole conference moves towards.

This is one example where that did happen including that early vision, certainly long before my time, came to fruition.”