| Shelby Evans
It might not seem like the United States has much at all to do with the first game of the Milano Cortina Olympic women’s hockey tournament when Germany and Sweden take to the ice. But fans of seven college teams – Boston University, St. Cloud State, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Ohio State University, Providence College, and the University of Minnesota – will be pleased to know that two Terriers, two Huskies, one Redhawk, one Friar, one Golden Gopher, four Buckeyes, and four Bulldogs will be competing and that they can cheer them on!
Slightly more than fifty percent of the players in the Olympic women’s hockey tournament in the Milano Cortina Games beginning this week developed in the United States’ National Collegiate Athletic Association system. That’s 117 athletes. In 1998 when women’s hockey made its Olympic debut? Zero. That’s because the NCAA had yet to commence championships in the sport, despite American colleges having had teams for decades. The number of international athletes who had spent time in American college hockey at those Nagano Games was ten: four Canadians, two Finns, three Swedes, and one Japanese player.
What explains this dramatic participation rise by international athletes, in only a quarter century?
Title IX, the educational civil rights law mandating gender equity in schools and school sports. It took a while longer for women’s hockey than other team sports like basketball, volleyball, and soccer to become part of the typical American college athletic department’s program offerings: the NCAA commenced national championships in only 2001. But even before the NCAA came around to the sport, U.S. women’s college hockey represented one of the premier under-23 development systems in the world, and serving many of the world’s best athletes.
American colleges have established quite a legacy as the development hub of Olympic athletes globally, and though this is especially the case for the Summer Games, the same phenomenon can be seen in women’s hockey.
Beginning in the 1960s, college women starting organizing intercollegiate hockey teams, and after the passage of Title IX, former men’s-only conferences began holding championships in women’s sports, including the first women’s hockey conference tournament hosted by the Ivy League in 1976.
Two decades later, in 1997, with the news that women’s hockey would join the Olympic program, the United States Olympic Committee, recognizing that the team would be made up of collegians, organized and financed the American Women's College Hockey Alliance (AWCHA). New Hampshire was the champion of the inaugural 1997-1998 season, with four Wildcats earning spots on the American team that took the first Olympic gold medal. That entire Team USA roster had developed in college sports (of course).
The AWCHA served its purpose for three seasons, and once the NCAA took over more schools added women's hockey, more resources were devoted to the sport, and more international athletes wanted to play in the American system, with its world-class infrastructure and competition, and often a free world-class education to boot.
The first 25 years of NCAA women’s hockey have included a dramatic rise in both the level of NCAA competition and the number of international athletes coming to play.
Smaller institutions with a regionally strong background in hockey have created dominant, international programs. The first NCAA “Frozen Four” women's tournament final was between the University of Minnesota-Duluth and St. Lawrence University. Duluth is a port town in the iron range of northern Minnesota. The city had a population of 86,000 in the year 2000, with a student body of 9,000 that academic year. St. Lawrence University is a private liberal arts college in the town of Canton in upstate New York. Their town had a population of 10,000 at the turn of the century with its student body at 1,800 undergraduates. These are not your typical NCAA powerhouses.
By the 2002 Games in Lake Placid, St. Lawrence University’s Isabelle Chartrand and University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Caroline Oulette won gold with Team Canada. Duluth had alumni and players on teams representing the United States, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Germany. That year, the International Olympic Committee expanded the tournament; 24% of the athletes across the eight teams had spent time developing within the NCAA.
Today, both the smaller hockey-proud schools and big-time power conference schools are developing the world’s Olympic talent. Women’s college hockey has grown to more than one hundred programs in the United States. That means more opportunities, and world-class ones at that, for the world’s athletes. Take, for a comparative example, St. Cloud State University, a school 70 miles northwest of Minneapolis and with a student body of 9,000, and a Big Ten behemoth, the University of Wisconsin.
St. Cloud State University will have three players traveling to Milan. One will play for the Finnish national team, one for the Swiss team, and one for Germany. The Huskies are a very global team, with 15 international players on their 2025-2026 roster. Four of their former players also will be competing at the 2026 Games. Despite all this international talent and success, their D1 team has never qualified for the NCAA Championships.
The gold standard in women’s hockey is the University of Wisconsin. In 25 years, the program has won eight national championships. Since 2002, former Olympic gold medalist and NHL Hall of Famer Mark Johnson has been the head coach of the program. In Milano Cortina, this dynastic program is responsible for the development of six players on Team USA, five players on Team Canada, and one player for Czechia. Five of the Badgers heading to the Olympic Games are still on their college roster. Wisconsin’s 2024-25 annual athletic department revenue was just shy of 200 million dollars; like other power conference schools, that football money is spent in ways that all athletes benefit and additionally men’s and women’s hockey have the capacity to be revenue generators.
Thanks to this robust domestic collegiate league, the United States women have medaled at all seven Olympic ice hockey competitions. They have earned one bronze, four silvers, and two golds. Canada also has medaled at every Olympics, and has had the edge, winning five golds and two silvers.
And just like half of the players in the Olympic women’s hockey tournament developed in American college sports, nearly half (47%) of NCAA women’s hockey athletes are international students, according to the NCAA’s most recent numbers from 2021. Behind tennis, hockey represents the sport with the second highest international participation in women's sports.
The U.S. collegiate system has played the greatest role in assisting Canada’s success, and Canada’s reliance on American college sports has grown over the years. In 1998 four of team Canada's 20 players had played at U.S. universities ahead of the Olympic tournament. This number was up to nine players in 2002, then 11 in 2006, and 15 in 2010. At the 2014 Olympics In Russia, 16 out of Canada’s 21-person roster had played college hockey in the United States.
In 2026, just like Team USA, every athlete on Canada’s roster spent time developing in the NCAA system. The other eight teams in the tournament all have at least one player with NCAA experience. And remember, college sports fans, Germany and Sweden – the teams playing in that opening game of the Olympic tournament – have 18 players combined! So get the popcorn and snacks, as well as those university foam fingers, ready for your viewing of the Milano Cortina Games.