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 expanded 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 be 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.