This is an update in our series tracking the number of publicly announced commitments in women’s college hockey. For 2024, the commitment rate continues to lag all previous recruiting years. On a more positive note, the Class of 2025 has had several more August commitment announcements than the 2024 class.
DI Women’s Hockey Commitment Rate by Months Prior to College
2023 Commits
With the start of the 2023 women’s college hockey season, we are closing the books on this recruiting class with only 185 commits. This is about 30 less players than in previous years, mostly due to the extra year of eligibility for many players due to Covid. This number is even lower than expected given that there are two new teams (Robert Morris and Assumption) beginning play this fall – compared to just one new team (Stonehill) last year.
2024 Commits
The 2024 commits continue to be even further behind the 2023 commitment rate as of the end of August by about 20% (99 2024’s vs 124 2023’s at this time last year). While there should be at least another 60 spots that haven’t been announced, many schools have been telling players they are full at the moment. However, I have heard of at least a couple of schools are still looking for 2024 players
2025 Commits
There have been almost daily announcements over the past couple of weeks for the Class of 2025. With the Labor Day tournaments now complete, players will be visiting campuses and making decisions between game weekends. There will likely be 50-60 announcements over the next couple of months.
Goalies
There are only 16 2023 commits and 10 2024 commits that have been publicly announced. Although I head of a 2023 goalie that only committed a few weeks ago in July to a top DI school (thanks to a transfer situation). Surprisingly there have already been 4 2025 goalie commits announced
Data assumptions:
- Data commitment dates – source: collegecommitments.com and Champs App analysis (including social media posts and private messages)
- Many players do not formally announce their commitments publicly (or are not tracked properly), so the premise of this analysis implies that the percent of publicly announced commitments that are tracked remains constant each year.
- Transfers between DI programs are not included in the number of commits
- Total number of publicly announced commitments for 2021 was 215 and for 2022 it was 214