Insights November 04, 2026

NEPSAC Hockey: Every New England Prep School Team, Mapped

By Coach Scott

When families start talking about prep school, they talk about “prep hockey” as if it were one thing. It is not. It is 85 schools across about ten leagues, from Maine to Pennsylvania with a few in Canada, and the leagues do not all play by the same rules. One of those rules decides whether the oldest player on the other bench is 17 or 19.

This is the page for figuring out which part of prep hockey a school actually sits in, and what that means for your kid.

If you are here for the ISL specifically, the ISL guide goes school by school through all 16. This page is the layer above it.

When this was written. Researched in November 2026, at the start of the 2026-27 season. Every result, record and champion on this page is from the 2025-26 season or earlier. Leagues, memberships and Large/Small classifications are for 2026-27, as published by NEPSAC and the leagues in October and November 2026. Sources are listed at the end.

Prep Hockey in 60 Seconds

NEPSAC (the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council) is not a league you play a regular season in. It is the body that sets eligibility rules for its member schools and runs the championships.¹

The regular season happens in the leagues: the ISL, the Founders and Housatonic schools, the Lakes Region, the Holt, the FAA, the Two Nations Prep league, and a large group of independents that schedule on their own. Your league is your regular season. NEPSAC is your postseason.

The ISL, the Founders League and the FAA run their own websites, and those links go there. We could not find an official site for the Housatonic, Lakes Region, Holt or Two Nations Prep leagues (NEPSAC’s own league directory lists none for the Lakes Region), so those links go to each league’s standings on U.S. Hockey Report.^1,12

Three things about that structure matter more than anything else on this page:

1. The leagues set different rules on postgraduates. The ISL bans them. Almost every other league publishes no rule at all, which leaves NEPSAC’s age limit as the only written one. More on that below, because it is the part most families learn late.

2. Your bracket is decided by enrollment, and it changes. NEPSAC splits its boys’ schools into Large and Small every fall by boys’ enrollment. A school can win the Large bracket one March and be a Small school the next.

3. Not every school can reach the NEPSAC playoffs. Thirteen schools on the map are NEPSAC associate members (11 of them outside New England). They play NEPSAC teams all season but are not eligible for the NEPSAC tournaments. And as of 2026-27, the FAA’s boys’ teams are not on NEPSAC’s boys’ tournament list either.^5,6

The Map

Every school with a boys’ or girls’ varsity prep team in 2026-27. The map opens on all 85 schools, colored by boys’ league, with girls-only schools in their own color. Switch to “Girls” to see the 66 schools with a girls’ varsity team, colored by girls’ league. Click any school for both leagues, whether it boards, and whether it is a full NEPSAC member. Use the layer control (top right) to show one league at a time.

Approximate campus locations, geocoded from each school’s address. Three Ontario schools (Ridley, St. Andrew’s, Upper Canada College) and Culver Academies in Indiana are on the map but outside the starting view; zoom out to see them.

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The Leagues at a Glance

The boys’ side, league by league. Counts are 2026-27 boys’ varsity teams on the map above.^1,12

League	Boys’ teams	Where	Postgraduates?
ISL (Keller and Eberhart divisions)	16	Eastern Massachusetts, plus St. George’s in Rhode Island	Not allowed (league rule)
Housatonic (the eight Founders League schools, plus Deerfield and Salisbury)	10	Connecticut, plus Deerfield (MA) and Trinity-Pawling (NY)	No published league rule; PGs do play
Lakes Region	8	New Hampshire, plus Vermont Academy	No published league rule
Holt	7	Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island	No published league rule
FAA (Fairchester Athletic Association)	7	Fairfield County CT and Westchester NY day schools, plus Kingswood Oxford	No published league rule
Two Nations Prep	8	New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ontario, Quebec	No published league rule; The Hill and Lawrenceville follow the MAPL rule below
Independents	24	Everywhere, from Andover and Exeter to Cushing, Winchendon and Millbrook	NEPSAC rules only

A few things the table does not show:

“Independent” is not a weaker tier. It just means the school schedules on its own instead of inside a conference. Andover, Exeter, Cushing, Dexter Southfield, Williston, Berkshire and Winchendon are all independents, and independents have won 13 NEPSAC boys’ titles since 2010.⁸
Founders vs. Housatonic. The Founders League is a Connecticut all-sports conference. For boys’ hockey, its eight schools play in the Housatonic league with Deerfield and Salisbury, and NEPSAC’s boys’ hockey by-laws list the Housatonic, not the Founders, as the league.⁵
The FAA is the one most guides miss. It is an all-sports conference of independent day schools in Fairfield County and Westchester, and it runs its own boys’ and girls’ hockey leagues. Greenwich Country Day won the 2026 boys’ title, beating Kingswood Oxford 4-3 in overtime.^13,14 None of the FAA boys’ teams is on NEPSAC’s 2026-27 boys’ tournament list, so their season ends with the FAA tournament. The FAA girls’ teams are on the girls’ list and can play both.^6,7
The girls’ leagues are not the same as the boys’. Some schools play girls’ hockey in a different league, or in a girls-only one like the Vaillancourt Conference (formed in 2023).¹ The map popups show each school’s girls’ league.

Schools by state

Every school on the map, by state. Girls-only schools are marked (girls), and the 19 schools with no girls’ varsity team are marked (boys only). An asterisk marks a NEPSAC associate member, which plays NEPSAC schools but is not eligible for the NEPSAC tournaments.^2,5

Massachusetts (31): Andover, Austin Prep, BB&N, Belmont Hill (boys only), Berkshire, Brooks, CATS Academy Boston (boys only), Cushing, Dana Hall (girls), Deerfield, Dexter Southfield, Governor’s, Groton, Lawrence Academy, Middlesex, Milton, Newton Country Day (girls), Noble & Greenough, Northfield Mt. Hermon, Pingree, Rivers, Roxbury Latin (boys only), St. Mark’s, St. Sebastian’s (boys only), Tabor, Thayer, Wilbraham & Monson (boys only), Williston Northampton, Winchendon, Winsor (girls), Worcester Academy

Connecticut (20): Avon Old Farms (boys only), Brunswick (boys only), Canterbury, Choate, Frederick Gunn School, Greenwich Academy (girls), Greenwich Country Day, Hamden Hall Country Day School (boys only), Hotchkiss, Kent, King School, Kingswood Oxford (boys only), Loomis Chaffee, Pomfret, Sacred Heart Greenwich (girls), Salisbury (boys only), South Kent (boys only), St. Luke’s (boys only), Taft, Westminster

New Hampshire (8): Brewster Academy, Exeter, Holderness, Kimball Union, New Hampton, Proctor, St. Paul’s, Tilton

Maine (4): Berwick, Hebron, Kents Hill, North Yarmouth Academy*

Rhode Island (4): Moses Brown*, Mount St. Charles, Portsmouth Abbey, St. George’s

Vermont (1): Vermont Academy

New York (7): Albany Academy (boys only), Harvey School, Hoosac, Millbrook, Nichols*, Rye Country Day, Trinity-Pawling (boys only)

New Jersey (1): Lawrenceville*

Pennsylvania (2): The Hill School, Wyoming Seminary (boys only)

Indiana (1): Culver Academies*

Quebec (3): Académie Saint-Louis* (boys only), Bishop’s College School* (boys only), Stanstead College*

Ontario (3): Ridley College, St. Andrew’s College (boys only), Upper Canada College* (boys only)

The Age Question: Postgraduates and the September 1 Rule

This is the section to read twice.

A postgraduate (PG) is a student who has already finished high school and enrolls at a prep school for one more year, usually for academics, hockey, or both. In a league that allows them, a PG can be a year older than the oldest senior on the ice.

Here is what is actually written down:

NEPSAC’s rule is about age, not grade. A player is eligible if they are “19 years old, or younger, on September 1 of each school year.” That is in NEPSAC’s handbook and on its membership page today.^3,4 NEPSAC’s handbook and hockey by-laws do not mention postgraduates at all.
The ISL bans PGs. Its own published principles refer to “the League rules regarding the ineligibility of post-graduates.”⁹
The MAPL is stricter on age. The Mid-Atlantic Prep League, a Pennsylvania and New Jersey all-sports conference that includes The Hill and Lawrenceville, says a player “may not turn 19 years of age before July 1,” two months earlier than NEPSAC’s cutoff, and allows only a limited number of PGs.¹⁰
Every other hockey league we checked publishes no PG rule. The Housatonic, Lakes Region, Holt, FAA and Two Nations leagues have no eligibility rules online. That does not prove there is no limit, but it means NEPSAC’s age rule is the only one in writing.

What that means in practice: outside the ISL, a team can dress a 19-year-old. For a 15-year-old freshman, that is the difference between playing against kids who are a year or two older and playing against young men who are four years older. Neither is wrong. Some families want the older competition, and some want four years in a league where everyone is a high school student. You just want to know which one you are choosing.

The other two written NEPSAC rules worth knowing: a player who has enrolled in college classes loses eligibility regardless of age, and a player who transfers mid-year cannot play varsity for the new school that season if they already played varsity for the old one.³

Large vs. Small: How Your School’s Bracket Is Decided

NEPSAC’s boys’ postseason is three eight-team brackets:⁵

Tournament	Also called	Who gets in
Stuart/Corkery	Elite 8	The top 8 teams, regardless of school size
Martin/Earl	Large School	The next 8 Large schools
Piatelli/Simmons	Small School	The next 8 Small schools

Whether a school is Large or Small is not a fixed number. The by-laws say schools “will be divided evenly based upon male enrollment in grades 9-12 prior to the start of the season.”⁵ In other words, it is a median split, redone every fall. For 2026-27 that produced 29 Large and 28 Small boys’ schools.⁶

Because it is redone every year, schools move. Cushing won the 2026 Large School title and is on the 2026-27 Small list. Lawrence Academy won the Small School title in 2018 and 2023 and is a Large school this season.^6,8 NEPSAC publishes the lists, not the enrollment numbers behind them.

Two practical consequences:

A school’s league division does not tell you its NEPSAC bracket. The ISL’s Keller and Eberhart divisions are the league’s own split, and they do not line up with NEPSAC’s Large and Small lists.
The girls have their own lists. Several schools are Large for boys and Small for girls (Westminster, Williston, Worcester, Dexter Southfield and Lawrence among them), which suggests the girls’ split is by girls’ enrollment.⁷ The girls’ by-laws are not published online, so that last part is an inference.

How the Elite 8 Gets Picked

This is the part that decides whether a great season ends in the Elite 8 or one bracket down.

Every team gets an RPI. It is a number built from three pieces: the team’s own winning percentage counts for 25%, its opponents’ winning percentage for 21%, and its opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage for 54%. Ties count as half a win, and a regular-season shootout counts as a tie.⁵
The top 16 by RPI go into a head-to-head comparison (NEPSAC calls it JSPR), similar to the PairWise system college hockey uses. Each pair of teams is compared on four things: head-to-head result, RPI, record against common opponents, and record against the other teams under consideration. The top 8 after those comparisons make the Elite 8.⁵
The Large and Small brackets are filled by RPI alone, from the teams left over.
A selection committee meets on the final Sunday of the regular season and may move a seed one place up or down, as long as the top four seeds keep home ice. The top four seeds in each bracket host their quarterfinals.⁵

The plain-language takeaway: more than half of a team’s RPI is its opponents’ opponents. A team with a strong record against a soft schedule can finish behind a team with a worse record against a hard one. That is why prep coaches care so much about who they schedule in December.

To be eligible at all, a boys’ team must play at least 15 games against NEPSAC hockey teams and no more than 35 games in total, scrimmages included.⁵ The quarterfinals are the Wednesday after the regular season ends, the semifinals that Saturday, and the finals that Sunday. The 2026 boys’ finals were on March 8 at UConn.⁸ NEPSAC had not published the 2027 dates when this was written.

The girls’ Elite 8 is the Chuck Vernon tournament, with the Patsy Odden (Large) and Dorothy Howard (Small) tournaments alongside it. The girls’ format began in 2020; before that, girls’ prep hockey had Division 1 and Division 2 tournaments.^8,11 The girls’ selection works the same way. The top 24 eligible teams go to the postseason: the top 8 by JSPR, regardless of size, play the Chuck Vernon, the next 8 Large schools by RPI play the Patsy Odden, and the next 8 Small schools play the Dorothy Howard. A team needs at least 15 games and no more than 35.^16,18 That description comes from girlsprephockey.us, which says its standings are its own reading of the league rules, because the girls’ by-laws are not published online.

Who Actually Wins

Every NEPSAC boys’ champion since 2010, from NEPSAC’s own bracket archives. There was no tournament in 2021 (COVID); the 2020 tournaments were played in full on March 8, 2020.⁸ The league column is each school’s league today.

Year	Elite 8 (Stuart/Corkery)	Large School (Martin/Earl)	Small School (Piatelli/Simmons)
2026	Avon Old Farms (Housatonic)	Cushing (Independent)	Winchendon (Independent)
2025	Cushing (Independent)	Phillips Andover (Independent)	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)
2024	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)	Kent (Housatonic)	Canterbury (Independent)
2023	Avon Old Farms (Housatonic)	Taft (Housatonic)	Lawrence Academy (ISL)
2022	Salisbury (Housatonic)	Kent (Housatonic)	Pomfret (Independent)
2021	no tournament	no tournament	no tournament
2020	Salisbury (Housatonic)	Loomis Chaffee (Housatonic)	The Gunnery (Independent)
2019	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)	Kent (Housatonic)	Tilton (Lakes Region)
2018	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)	Brunswick (Independent)	Lawrence Academy (ISL)
2017	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)	Avon Old Farms (Housatonic)	Pomfret (Independent)
2016	The Gunnery (Independent)	Thayer (ISL)	St. Mark’s (ISL)
2015	Salisbury (Housatonic)	Brooks (ISL)	St. Mark’s (ISL)
2014	Salisbury (Housatonic)	Loomis Chaffee (Housatonic)	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)
2013	Salisbury (Housatonic)	Cushing (Independent)	Brooks (ISL)
2012	Lawrence Academy (ISL)	Berkshire (Independent)	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)
2011	Milton (ISL)	Westminster (Housatonic)	Dexter (Independent)
2010	Avon Old Farms (Housatonic)	Choate (Housatonic)	Kimball Union (Lakes Region)

The Gunnery is now the Frederick Gunn School.

What the table says:

The Elite 8 has mostly belonged to the Housatonic and Kimball Union. Of 16 Elite 8 titles since 2010, Housatonic schools won 8 (Salisbury 5, Avon Old Farms 3) and Kimball Union won 4. The ISL has 2, both before 2013.
The ISL wins where it plays. Its schools have won 5 Small School titles and 2 Large School titles in the same stretch. That fits the league’s design: no postgraduates, so its teams are often younger than the teams they face in the Elite 8.
Seeds are not destiny. Avon Old Farms won the 2026 Elite 8 as the No. 8 seed, beating No. 2 St. Mark’s 4-2 in the final.⁸

Girls’ Elite 8 (Chuck Vernon) champions since it began: Noble and Greenough (2020, 2024), Williston Northampton (2022, 2023) and Loomis Chaffee (2025, 2026). Loomis beat Deerfield 5-1 in the 2026 final; Exeter won the 2026 Large School title and Groton the Small School title.^8,15

What a Girls’ Prep Season Looks Like

First, which schools: 66 of the 85 schools on the map field a girls’ varsity team. Switch the map to “Girls” to see just those, colored by girls’ league, and the state-by-state list marks the 19 that don’t.

The girls’ calendar has a shape worth knowing before your daughter’s first winter. In 2025-26, 20 tournaments were on it:¹⁵

When	What
December	Ten holiday tournaments, eight of them Dec. 18-21: Harrington Invitational (Nobles), Patsy K. Odden Invitational (Taft), Edward G. Watkins Invitational (Cushing), Howard Invitational (St. George’s), Dexter Southfield Holiday, Governor’s Jamboree, Portsmouth Abbey Holiday, Newton Country Day, plus the Pingree and Exeter Invitationals earlier in the month
January	New Year’s Prep Puck Drop (Williston Northampton)
February	Maine Prep Cup (Hebron), Hill Invitational, then the league playoffs: FAA, Vaillancourt Conference, EIL and Lakes Region
March	The three NEPSAC tournaments (Chuck Vernon, Patsy Odden, Dorothy Howard), March 4-8, 2026

Not every “tournament” is a bracket. The Exeter Invitational in December 2025 ran eight teams through three games each over a weekend, with no final.¹⁵ If you want to watch a lot of girls’ prep hockey in one place, the holiday weekend is the one.

Choosing a School: What to Ask

Most of the decision is not about hockey. It is about the school: academics, admissions, cost, and whether your kid wants to live there. But on the hockey side, these are the questions the structure above says to ask, and the answers are usually one email to the coach away.

Which league does the team play in, and does it allow postgraduates? If yes, ask how many PGs are on this year’s roster and how many usually are.
Is the school Large or Small this year, and has it moved? That decides which bracket a good season leads to.
Is the school a full NEPSAC member? Associate members, and for now the FAA’s boys’ teams, are not on the NEPSAC tournament path.
Who is on the schedule? Because opponents’ records are most of the RPI, a December schedule full of strong teams is a decision the coach made on purpose. Ask about it.
Boarding or day, and what does that mean here? Some schools board five days a week only (Belmont Hill, Harvey), some are nearly all boarders, and some boarding schools have a large day population. The map popups show each school’s own description.
If you have a daughter: which girls’ league, and which bracket? The girls’ league and the girls’ Large/Small list can both differ from the boys’.

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Where to Follow the 2026-27 Season

NEPSAC tournaments for brackets once they are announced, and the tournament archives for every past bracket.
NEPSAC classifications: the current Large and Small lists for boys and girls.
U.S. Hockey Report for standings by league. Much of it is subscriber-only.
New England Hockey Journal for previews and results. Also largely subscriber-only.
girlsprephockey.us for the girls’ schedule and tournaments. The site describes its own results as unofficial.

Make the Four Years Count

Whichever school it ends up being, the hockey problem is the same one it always was. Thirty-odd games happen, and by spring almost none of them are still in anybody’s head. Prep programs come with real coaching staffs. Most club teams before prep run on volunteers and a phone in the stands.

That is what we built Scout Elite for: coaches and parents turning game video into development in minutes, without a video staff.