The Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA) is a college athletic conference which operates in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the midwestern United States.

The conference was formally approved in 1980 as an association of six schools in Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, though the teams' schedules would not be standardized until the following season.

This led to some teams playing an unequal number of games in the 1980–81 season.

[2][3] The move would have left only two men's teams in the NCHA, leading St. Norbert and St. Scholastica to join the Midwest Collegiate Hockey Association (MCHA).

[5] The men's and women's sides will retain separate administrative structures, as well as their automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament.