Wilkes University Women’s Hockey won the inaugural MAC conference title last season. (Photo via Wilkes University Athletics)

Our season previews continue as the 2025-2026 Men’s & Women’s Division III hockey regular season nears closer. Today, we look at the women’s side of a league in its second year as an auto-bid league, the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC).

The MAC features:

Alvernia
Arcadia
Hood
King’s (PA)
Lebanon Valley
Neumann
Stevenson
Wilkes

2024-2025 Overview

Last season, we saw a Wilkes University let not just the conference know, but let everyone on the national stage know, that they’re building something worth noting down in Wilkes-Barre. Head Coach Dave LaBaff enters his fourth year at the helm of the Colonels, holding a career record of 44-31-5, but please note, 19 of those losses and two ties came in year one where he inherited a program that in four years of existence had eight wins, including two winless (incl. COVID) seasons. LaBaff’s record in his past two seasons with Wilkes is a stellar 40-12-3… Former Head Coach Earl Utter in his four years held a record of 8-60-4 to go along with his career overall record of 59-244-19 (.213) …

In the MAC’s first season as an auto-bid league, Wilkes took the auto bid, going 18-2-1 in conference play and 22-5-1 overall, defeating the #2 seed Arcadia (20-4-3) 2-1 in the MAC finals, eventually falling to Colby College (18-7-2) 4-3 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Wilkes held a relatively weak schedule (59th), along with Arcadia (54th), but both teams won the games on their schedules.

Speaking of Arcadia, they and Lebanon Valley were the two other teams who really separated themselves from the rest of the league.

The Knights of Arcadia finished the season 20-4-3, the best season by far in program history, fourth year ‘founding’ Head Coach Kelsey Koelzer, a former Captain at NCAA D-I Princeton University, who compiled 100 points in her four year career with the Tigers, has the Knights in a position where they could legitimately see themselves in the NCAA tournament, as the league is ultimately a three team race and they were only one goal away from a potential auto bid last season. Koelzer has improved the program’s record every season, winning 10, 13, 15, & 20 games (58-40-6) respectively.

Arcadia University Women’s Hockey (Photo by Hunter Martin Photography)

Lebanon Valley was the third team who really had a show out season, they were led by Sophomore Anna Dale, who tallied 40 points on the season (27 goals, 13 assists), earning herself a spot on the DIIIHockeyNews.com First Team East. The Dutchmen finished 17-8-1, their best season as a program by far, like their counterparts Wilkes & Arcadia. Head Coach Matt Yingst enters his ninth year as head coach, his previous best record was 12-13-1 in 2022-23, but other than that, the Dutchmen hadn’t won more than eight games ever in a season (overall program record of 59-134-10).

Looking at these three programs in particular, by no means are we taking anything away from them, especially Wilkes since they received the NCAA bid, but it’s no surprise these teams suddenly excelled so quickly once they left the UCHC, where they avoided Nazareth & Utica. Now, Wilkes and Arcadia had been improving consistently, Wilkes more rapidly, but LVC included, benefited heavily from the MAC becoming a league. Other than these three, the combined record of the league from the other five teams was 37-77-10. This league is largely compiled of new programs, as the eldest program is Neumann who began in 2001, but the next oldest program is Stevenson, est. 2012, with multiple programs being less than 5 years old. Again, taking nothing away from the top three, but to be fair, the league is in a major growing stage as its headed into year two and multiple programs aren’t far off from that either, including Hood College, who enters their second season as a program.

Returning Production

Looking at the league and the returning production via our guy Scott Huston, we find some interesting results:

Wilkes enters the season ranked #1 in the MAC Preseason Coaches’ Poll and is ranked #15 in the DIIIHockeyNews.com Preseason Poll. The Colonels return their point leader from last season Haylee Bouchard, the 2024-25 Wilkes Female Athlete of the year and a DIIIHockeyNews.com Second Team East award winner. Bouchard tallied 37 points in her freshman season and 32 in her sophomore season, initially, she entered the transfer portal at the end of last season, but as of the 2025-26 Wilkes roster, she’s back on the team and is obviously a big asset for the Colonels. Wilkes also returns a ton of team production, they’ll return 78.3% of scoring and 73.97% of assists, they’re an easy pick for the #1 preseason poll in terms of returning production and they also return starting goaltender Audrey Milne, who held a 19-5-1 record and .927 GAA.

Lebanon Valley, like Wilkes, returns their star forward Anna Dale who racked up 40 points as mentioned, improving from her 11 points in her freshman year. The Dutchmen return a solid 78.05% of goals, 69.91% of assists, & 73.33% of total points, look for them to pick up where they left off last season along with Wilkes in a league that’s largely building foundations.

Lebanon Valley College Women’s Hockey. (Photo by Travis Boyd)

Arcadia is in a tough spot since it’s the fifth year of the program’s existence, they’re losing 13 seniors due to their original recruiting class graduating. They’ll return a mere 47.16% of total team points. We may see a slow start from the Knights but be sure that they’ll get things together with their stellar Head Coach Kelsey Koelzer. 

The highest returning production team in the league is Hood College, which makes sense considering it’s their second season as a program. The Blazers return 87.5% of scoring, 76.92% of assists, & 81.52% of total points.

Dark Horses

It’s hard for me to pick dark horses for this league other than the top three teams, similar to the men’s side, I’d have to say Alvernia simply because they finished last season 14-10-2, returning a solid 80% of goals, but a low 57.29% of assists for an overall total of 67.25% of points returning. I think Alvernia needs a few more years to win the MAC or make a run at the top, but they could be someone to look out for in terms of a few upsets or maybe make a little run come conference playoff time.

Final Thoughts

My final thoughts are that I believe Wilkes will be a really tough team to beat this season in this league. I don’t see them taking any steps back and although Lebanon Valley will be right there with them, I just need to see it to believe it. I’ll roll with the Colonels until they’re overtaken.

Arcadia is a wildcard, they graduated 13 seniors and tons of leadership and production, so that just means they’ll have new scoring and assist leaders, but it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes them to get their feet under them and really get the ball (puck) rolling this season.

This league will be a fun one to watch, we will see if the league gets their first NCAA tournament playoff game win this year.