Team USA’s official roster for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics is about, and the NCAA’s footprint is throughout it.
Of the 232 members of the U.S. Olympic group, 36% are NCAA-connected athletes. Those 84 athletes symbolize 9 Olympic sports activities and 9 NCAA sports activities, with ties to 51 NCAA faculties and 27 conferences. The roster additionally contains illustration from all three NCAA divisions. Team USA’s NCAA-connected group contains 38 in males’s sports activities and 46 in ladies’s sports activities.
Five groups have at the least 75% collegiate participation on their U.S. Olympic rosters, together with bobsleigh, cross-country snowboarding, males’s ice hockey, ladies’s ice hockey and skeleton.
College hockey stays the NCAA’s clearest path to the Winter Games
Ice hockey is the spine of Team USA’s NCAA connections, with 43 of the NCAA-linked athletes having school hockey backgrounds — constituting 90% of all Team USA ice hockey gamers (43 of 48).
The U.S. ladies’s ice hockey group is a full NCAA showcase: all 23 gamers have NCAA expertise throughout eight packages, led by Wisconsin (six) and Minnesota (5). The roster contains 11 gamers who’ve gained an NCAA nationwide championship, together with 4 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award winners — given to the sport’s high participant.
(Read more on the college connections of the Team USA women’s ice hockey’s team.)
On the boys’s facet, 20 of 25 gamers on Team USA’s roster performed NCAA males’s ice hockey, representing 10 packages and a deep cross-section of school hockey’s nationwide powers. Boston U. (5) and Michigan (4) make up the majority of the roster’s school connections, although seven gamers performed in an NCAA Frozen Four.
(Dive deeper into the Team USA men’s ice hockey roster.)
Top NCAA faculties represented on Team USA
A handful of packages sit on the heart of Team USA’s NCAA story. Seven NCAA faculties have three or extra connections to Team USA athletes.
- Minnesota (7).
- Boston College (6).
- Wisconsin (6).
- Boston U. (5).
- Michigan (4).
- Northeastern (4).
- Dartmouth (3)
- Ohio State (3).
(Explore the full database of NCAA qualifiers to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.)
Conference footprint: Big Ten leads the way in which
Team USA’s NCAA-connected athletes span 27 conferences, led by the Big Ten Conference (24 athlete). Here are the conferences with three or extra Team USA athletes:
- Big Ten Conference (24)
- Atlantic Coast Conference (8)
- America East Conference (7)
- Big 12 Conference (5)
- Coastal Athletic Association (5)
- Patriot League (5)
- The Ivy League (4)
- The Summit League (4)
- Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (3)
- Mountain West Conference (3)
Note: This knowledge solely displays faculties’ major convention affiliation and never single-sport conferences.
Beyond hockey: snowboarding and observe and discipline broaden the NCAA story
Ice hockey leads the NCAA sport breakdown, however the roster additionally highlights significant NCAA ties in snowboarding and observe and discipline. Here are the highest NCAA sports activities represented amongst Team USA athletes:
- Ice hockey (43).
- Skiing (21) — Nordic (15) and Alpine (6).
- Track and discipline/cross nation (14).
- Football (2).
- Soccer (2).
Olympic regulars: NCAA-connected veterans returning to the Games
A roster announcement all the time brings new faces, however Team USA’s NCAA pipeline additionally contains acquainted names headed to their third Olympics or extra. Ice hockey drives that listing, with extra Olympic regulars unfold throughout a number of sports activities.
Ice hockey
- Hilary Knight (Wisconsin) — fifth Olympics.
- Kendall Coyne Schofield (Northeastern) — 4th Olympics.
- Lee Stecklein (Minnesota) — 4th Olympics.
- Alex Carpenter (Boston College) — third Olympics.
- Cayla Barnes (Ohio State and Boston College) — third Olympics.
- Kelly Pannek (Minnesota) — third Olympics.
- Megan Keller (Boston College) — third Olympics.
Other sports activities
- Elana Meyers Taylor (George Washington, softball) — fifth Olympics (bobsleigh).
- Nick Baumgartner (Northern Michigan, soccer) — fifth Olympics (snowboard).
- Brittany Bowe (Florida Atlantic, basketball) — 4th Olympics (pace skating).
- Rosie Brennan (Dartmouth, snowboarding — Nordic) — third Olympics (cross-country snowboarding).
- Joanne Reid (Colorado, snowboarding — Nordic) — third Olympics (biathlon).
How to look at Team USA within the Milan Cortina Games
Fans can observe Team USA all through the 2026 Winter Olympics throughout NBCUniversal’s protection, led by NBC and its affiliate networks. Every occasion may even be livestreamed and out there on demand on Peacock. Daily broadcast schedules can be found at nbcolympics.com/schedule.