Intercollegiate Hockey Association

The Intercollegiate Hockey Association was a loose collection of ice hockey programs from schools in the Northeastern United States. The colleges involved would schedule one another at least once during the season with and the team with the best record would be declared the champion. As this was the only championship for college hockey at the time, however unofficial the designation may have been, the victor served as the de facto 
National Champion. The IHA was called both the Intercollegiate Hockey Association and the Intercollegiate Hockey League during its existence. It's referred to here as the IHA to distinguish from the later Intercollegiate Hockey League.
==History==
The league began in February 1898 while the season was in progress. Brown, Columbia and Yale agreed to form the league after some of their intercollegiate game had already been played but counted all of the matches played that season for the inaugural championship. Brown was the initial victor, finishing with an undefeated record between the three squads.
After the first full season of play the league started holding a championship series at the end of the season for the two best teams. Yale won the first three series. The series was eventually reduced to a single game before being abandoned altogether after 1904. Beginning with the 1904–05 season the league champion would simple be the team with the best record against conference opponents.
The league expended to include other future Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton then welcomed Dartmouth after Brown suspended its program in 1906. At the same meeting where Dartmouth was admitted the committee also decided to disallow freshmen from participating on varsity squads. Cornell joined the league a few years later and everything appeared to going well for the league.
In 1911 a new policy by the operators of the St. Nicholas Rink, the primary facility for league games, forced Harvard to resign from the league. The following year both Columbia and Yale left for various reasons, dropping membership back to just three teams. The league continued until the end of the year before disbanding.
==Members==
Institution	Nickname	Location 	Founded	Tenure 	Fate 	Current conference
 	Bears 	Providence, Rhode Island 	1764 	1898–1906 	Program Suspended 	ECAC Hockey
 	Lions 	New York, New York 	1754 	1898–1912 	Independent 	Program Suspended
 	Big Red 	Ithaca, New York 	1865 	1909–1913 	Independent 	ECAC Hockey
 	none † 	Hanover, New Hampshire 	1769 	1906–1913 	Independent 	ECAC Hockey
 	Crimson 	Boston, Massachusetts 	1636 	1901–1911 	Independent 	ECAC Hockey
 	Quakers 	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	1740 	1898–1899, 1900–1901	Program Suspended 	Program Suspended
 	Tigers 	Princeton, New Jersey 	1746 	1900–1913 	Intercollegiate Hockey League	ECAC Hockey
 	Bulldogs	New Haven, Connecticut 	1701 	1898–1912 	Intercollegiate Hockey League	ECAC Hockey
† Dartmouth's athletic teams did not possess a moniker until the 1920's.
===Membership timeline===
DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy
ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:01/01/1898 till:06/01/1914
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5
Colors =
 id:men value:rgb(0.6,0.6,1) legend:men
 id:women value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.5) legend:women
 id:both value:rgb(0.5,0.8,0.8) legend:both
 id:line value:black
 id:bg value:white
PlotData=
 width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s
 bar:BRO color:men from:02/20/1898 till:06/01/1906 text:[[Brown Bears men's ice hockey|Brown]] (1898–1906)
 bar:COL color:men from:02/20/1898 till:06/01/1912 text:[[Columbia Lions|Columbia]] (1898–1912)
 bar:YAL color:men from:02/20/1898 till:06/01/1912 text:[[Yale Bulldogs men's ice hockey|Yale]] (1898–1912)
 bar:PEN color:men from:06/01/1898 till:06/01/1899 text:[[Penn Quakers men's ice hockey|Pennsylvania]] (1898–1899, 1900–1901)
 bar:PEN color:men from:06/01/1900 till:06/01/1901 text:
 bar:PRI color:men from:06/01/1899 till:06/01/1913 text:[[Princeton Tigers men's ice hockey|Princeton]] (1899–1913)
 bar:HAR color:men from:06/01/1901 till:06/01/1911 text:[[Harvard Crimson men's ice hockey|Harvard]] (1901–1911)
 bar:DAR color:men from:06/01/1906 till:06/01/1913 text:[[Dartmouth Big Green men's ice hockey|Dartmouth]] (1906–1913)
 bar:COR color:men from:06/01/1909 till:06/01/1913 text:[[Cornell Big Red men's ice hockey|Cornell]] (1909–1913)
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:01/01/1900
==See also==
* Intercollegiate Hockey League
* Pentagonal League
==References==
Category:Defunct NCAA Division I ice hockey conferences
Category:Sports in the Eastern United States