The ECAC Women’s East hockey league will realign into two six-team divisions for the 2007-08 season. This realignment was the result of two new league members being approved and the departure of another team to the ECAC Women’s West Hockey League.
Starting with the 2007-08 season the ECAC Women’s East League will have two six-team divisions, for scheduling purposes, called the North and South. The North division will be comprised of Castleton, New England College, Norwich, Plymouth State, Saint Michael’s and Southern Maine. The South division will be home for Holy Cross, MIT, Mass.-Boston, Manhattanville College, Saint Anselm and Salve Regina.
Postseason play has been expanded by two teams. Eight teams will be seeded in order of overall league winning percentage. Quarterfinals will take place on Saturday, March 1 at home sites of the top four seeds. The semifinals and championship will take place on Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9 at the highest remaining seed.
League administrators came to an agreement on the realignment structure for the league at a Wednesday, Jan. 24 meeting.
The league had unanimously added Norwich and Plymouth State to its membership beginning with the 2007-08 season at league meetings at the ECAC Fall Convention. In early December, RIT left the league and gained membership in the ECAC Women’s West Hockey League, effective for the 2007-08 season.
“Over the years, the membership in each of our hockey leagues has been subject to change due to a variety of reasons. Such was the case this year with Plymouth State and Norwich adding women’s hockey to their sports sponsorship list and Rochester Institute of Technology deciding they would be better served being in the West due to legitimate geographical and travel concerns” said Steve Bamford, ECAC interim commissioner.
Bamford said that the new league schedule “offers the ECAC Women’s East membership the opportunity for a double round-robin within their respective divisions and nine additional games facing teams in the other league division for a total of nineteen regular season games.”
The new realigned schedule was developed by Michael Letzeisen, ECAC coordinator of operations and services.
