ECAC 2 was an intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

College Division The NCAA College Division was a historic subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) consisting of member schools competing at a lower level of college sports. The NCAA initially divided schools into a College Division and a ...

. The league was created as a way to fairly divide the upper- and lower-class programs that had been members of

ECAC Hockey ECAC Hockey is one of the six conferences that compete in NCAA Division I college ice hockey, ice hockey. The conference used to be affiliated with the Eastern College Athletic Conference, a consortium of over 300 colleges in the eastern United ...

. In 1984 the conference was split in two, creating ECAC East and

ECAC West ECAC West was a college athletic conference which operated in the northeastern United States until 2017. It participated in the NCAA's Division III as a hockey-only conference. The conference ceased to exist after the end of the 2016–17 season wh ...

as completely independent leagues.

History

Foundation

In 1950 college ice hockey received its first official conference, the

Tri-State League The Tri-State League was the name of six different circuits in American minor league baseball. History The first league of that name played for four years (1887–1890) and consisted of teams in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia. The second league ...

, and while the conference possessed a minimal number of teams it routinely received one of the two eastern bids to the NCAA tournament. Concurrently, once seven western schools formed their own conference they were able to earn both western bids each year because there were no other colleges in competition for tournament berths. This situation left one eastern bid available for at least two dozen eastern schools. The arrangement came to a head in 1961 when both eastern bids were given to Tri-State League teams and very soon thereafter

was formed. Following the same pattern as the western schools, every available eastern college joined the league, including the three remaining members of the Tri-State League, and the 28-team mega conference was born. Due to the sheer number of universities in the conference none of the teams could guarantee playing each other so from the outset the conference standings were deemphasized and the eight teams that played in the conference tournament were selected by a committee based upon their perceived strength. This led to some schools like Williams, who finished 4th in the standings in

1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...

, not being invited to the tournament despite a 16–3–1 record against other ECAC schools because of their assumed weaker competition.

Split

The giant league remained in place for three seasons before being split in two. 15 teams that were willing to invest greater amounts of time, effort and money to their ice hockey programs remained in ECAC Hockey while the remaining 14 schools joined in a new league, ECAC 2. ECAC 2 was the first ice hockey conference formed for the NCAA College Division (which would later become

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Third ...

and Division II) and was virtually the only collection of schools in the country that played at the lower tier. After only seven years the conference had doubled in size and once again created a lower tier ( ECAC 3) though only six schools chose to leave for the lesser division in 1971.

Further Growth and Dissolution

ECAC 2 remained the primary conference outside Division I for several years but started getting some competition in the 1970s. In that time, however, the conference continued to grow larger until it possessed over 30 members by 1975 and divided itself internally into two divisions (East and West) which would continue for another decade. In 1978, five years after dividing the college division into two numerical divisions, the NCAA began the NCAA Division II Men's Ice Hockey Championship and the inaugural title was won by ECAC 2 member, Merrimack. ECAC 2 would win four more championships over the next five years and established itself as the premier league at the Division II level. In 1983, the NCAA announced that it would begin hosting a Division III Championship and require all schools who normally played at that level to submit bids for the new tournament. Even though ECAC 2 technically competed at the D-II level that year, most of its member teams that made tournament appearances did so in the D-III series. With the vast majority of all programs needing to reclassify for the D-III tournament, ECAC 2 dropped down to the lower level in the summer of 1984. That change, however, was not enough to keep the league as one entity. During the season, it was divided into two conferences with both ECAC East and

holding separate tournaments at the end of the year.

Legacy

Most of the 46 programs that played in the ECAC 2 are still going as of 2018, with many having jumped up to the Division I ranks. While several schools have won Division III national titles in the years since the conference ended,

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

, UMass, and Union have won Division I national titles.

ECAC 2 Tournament

The ECAC 2 played a conference tournament from 1967 through its final full season in 1984. The tournament served as the de facto Division II

National Championship A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or competition, contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the be ...

until the NCAA instituted a national tournament in 1978. That year ECAC 2 effectively split its conference in two by having two division tournaments (East and West) with all games between the two divisions counting for the regular season.

Member schools

In its 20-year existence ECAC 2 had 45 individual schools as members. # enrollment in 2018
† as of 2018

Membership timeline

DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1985 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:20 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 #> to display a count on left side of graph, use "left:20" to suppress the count, use "left:20"<# Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:men value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.8) legend:men id:line value:black id:bg value:white id:Full value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.8) # PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1966 text:

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

(1964–1966) bar:2 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1971 text:

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

(1964–1971) bar:3 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1972 text: Amherst (1964–1972) bar:4 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1974 text:

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...

(1964–1974) bar:5 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1979 text:

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

(1964–1979) bar:6 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: American International (1964–1984) bar:7 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: Bowdoin (1964–1984) bar:8 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: Colby (1964–1984) bar:9 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text:

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

(1964–1984) bar:10 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text:

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: * Alexander Hamilton (1755/1757–1804), first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States * ''Hamilton'' (musical), a 2015 Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda ** ''Hamilton'' (al ...

(1964–1984) bar:11 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: Merrimack (1964–1984) bar:12 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: Middlebury (1964–1984) bar:13 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text:

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

(1964–1984) bar:14 color:Full from:08/01/1964 till:05/01/1984 text: Williams (1964–1984) bar:15 color:Full from:08/01/1966 till:05/01/1982 text: Boston State (1966–1982) bar:15 color:Full from:08/01/1982 till:05/01/1984 text: UMass Boston (1982–1984) bar:16 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1971 text: Assumption (1967–1971) bar:17 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1971 text: Nichols (1967–1971) bar:18 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1971 text: Worcester State (1967–1971) bar:19 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1976 text:

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

(1967–1976) bar:20 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1983 text:

New Haven New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Co ...

(1967–1983) bar:21 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1984 text: Holy Cross (1967–1984) bar:22 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1984 text: Oswego State (1967–1984) bar:23 color:Full from:08/01/1967 till:05/01/1984 text: Salem State (1967–1984) bar:24 color:Full from:08/01/1968 till:05/01/1975 text: Lowell Tech (1968–1975) bar:24 color:Full from:08/01/1975 till:05/01/1983 text: Lowell (1975–1983) bar:25 color:Full from:08/01/1968 till:05/01/1984 text: Babson (1968–1984) bar:26 color:Full from:08/01/1969 till:05/01/1971 text: Lehigh (1969–1971) bar:27 color:Full from:08/01/1969 till:05/01/1984 text:

Saint Anselm Anselm of Canterbury OSB (; 1033/4–1109), also known as (, ) after his birthplace and () after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher, and theologian of the Catholic Church, who served as Archbishop of Canterb ...

(1969–1984) bar:28 color:Full from:08/01/1970 till:05/01/1981 text: Bridgewater State (1970–1981) bar:29 color:Full from:08/01/1971 till:05/01/1984 text: Buffalo (1971–1984) bar:30 color:Full from:08/01/1971 till:05/01/1984 text:

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

(1971–1984) bar:31 color:Full from:08/01/1973 till:05/01/1980 text:

Army An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...

(1973–1980) bar:32 color:Full from:08/01/1975 till:05/01/1980 text: Bryant (1975–1980) bar:33 color:Full from:08/01/1975 till:05/01/1984 text: North Adams State (1975–1984) bar:34 color:Full from:08/01/1975 till:05/01/1984 text: Union (1975–1984) bar:35 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Brockport State (1976–1984) bar:36 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Cortland State (1976–1984) bar:37 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Elmira (1976–1984) bar:38 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Geneseo State (1976–1984) bar:39 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Plattsburgh State (1976–1984) bar:40 color:Full from:08/01/1976 till:05/01/1984 text: Potsdam State (1976–1984) bar:41 color:Full from:08/01/1977 till:05/01/1979 text:

(1977–1979) bar:42 color:Full from:08/01/1978 till:05/01/1984 text: Westfield State (1978–1984) bar:43 color:Full from:08/01/1979 till:05/01/1982 text: Framingham State (1979–1982) bar:44 color:Full from:08/01/1980 till:05/01/1984 text:

RIT RIT is a common abbreviated name for Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, USA. RIT or rit may also refer to: Business * Recherche et Industrie Thérapeutiques, the former name of what is now GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals in Bel ...

(1980–1984) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:1966

References

{{Reflist NCAA Division II ice hockey conferences