ABOUT US
welcome to Atlantic Prep Athletic Conference
The Atlantic Prep Athletic Conference (APAC), founded in 2017, establishes the first pure scholastic ice hockey conference in the Philadelphia area. The APAC builds on an already strong athletic and academic community of schools to create a scholastic hockey model where players can benefit from long established traditions, rivalries and competition. The founding members of the APAC are La Salle College High School (Wyndmoor, PA), Holy Ghost Prep (Bensalem, PA), Malvern Prep (Malvern, PA), and St. Joseph’s Prep (Philadelphia, PA). To more fully organize the process of building a league from the ground up, the athletic directors tapped long time ice hockey coach, administrator and former COO of the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation Jim Britt as the league commissioner. “The core model of the league is to establish ice hockey as a fully recognized scholastic varsity sport within the schools,” said Jim Britt, the founding commissioner of the APAC. “Teams are full varsity programs, players will follow all school expectations for participation and the league management will be made up of principals, athletic directors and school representatives.”
Previously
The history of these discussions goes back for many years. Joe Parisi the Athletic Director of La Salle College High School said, “This has been something that has been discussed for many years and it speaks volumes about the spirit of cooperation and professionalism amongst the coaches and Athletic Directors to see this come to fruition.” La Salle College High School and Holy Ghost Prep previously played in the Suburban High School Hockey League (SHSHL) at the AAA level. Malvern Prep and St. Joseph’s Prep played in the in the Inter County Scholastic Hockey League (ICSHL) at the AAA level.
Moving forward
The new conference will consist of four teams: La Salle College High School, Holy Ghost Prep, Malvern Prep, and St. Joseph’s Prep. Each school will field a Varsity AAA team and a Junior Varsity team that will compete in the APAC. The Varsity roster may include up to 30 players but only 20 are eligible to dress for a game. The Varsity and Junior Varsity teams will each play one another three times in league play. These four schools remain members of the EPIHA (Eastern Pennsylvania Ice Hockey Association), are still eligible to play in the Flyers Cup tournament and go on to compete for a State Championship. Competition will begin in early November and end with a league championship in late February to help prepare teams for the Flyers Cup Tournament.
