Hockey academies in North America: real tuition costs

Three different routes — do not confuse them

Foreign families researching "hockey school in the US or Canada" are often really looking at three structurally different things. The CHL (Canada's major-junior league — WHL/OHL/QMJHL) is a route where a club invites the player through the annual Import Draft, with billeting and a league-funded tuition-and-books package — the family does not pay tuition. The USA's NCDC is a junior league where "tuition-free" refers only to hockey-programme fees; academic schooling is arranged individually per player and family. A private hockey academy or boarding prep school — the subject of this page — is neither: it is a school the family enrols in and pays for directly, independent of whether any club has shown interest at all. This page is only about that third route.

US boarding prep schools: what they actually charge

Figures below come directly from each school's own admissions or tuition page — not an aggregator, and not an EHA estimate. None of these schools publish a breakdown of exactly what hockey itself costs beyond tuition, except where noted.

• Shattuck-St Mary's (Faribault, MN), 2026-27: $65,000 domestic / $73,000 international boarding tuition, plus a separate $11,000 hockey programme fee — the only school here that itemises hockey as its own charge rather than folding it into tuition.
• Kent School (Kent, CT), 2026-27: $83,700 boarding (includes room/board, health centre, technology, most textbooks); $62,900 day.
• Culver Academies (Culver, IN), 2026-27: $69,500 combined tuition, room and board.
• Salisbury School (Salisbury, CT), 2025-26: $75,450 tuition, $78,788.50 with general/technology/textbook fees; athletic equipment and travel are billed separately.
• Berkshire School (Sheffield, MA), 2026-27: $82,200 tuition plus $695 technology and $895 health fees, $83,790 total.
• Tabor Academy (Marion, MA), 2026-27: $82,100 boarding / $62,800 day; books and athletic supplies billed separately.

Across these six, boarding tuition alone runs roughly $65,000 to $84,000 for the year cited — treat this as a range across six named, dated data points, not an average, since costs and inclusions differ by school.

Financial aid is real at several of these schools

Every school above that publishes aid data offers meaningful need-based support: Kent School's average award is $59,200 with 36% of students receiving aid ($10.9M total budget); Tabor Academy aids 36% of students ($8.5M in grants); Shattuck-St Mary's aids roughly half its students (nearly $7M awarded in 2023-24); Culver aids 38%; Salisbury aids 37% with awards from $1,000 to full tuition; Berkshire aids roughly 25% with awards from $5,000 to nearly full tuition. Aid eligibility and process for an international family should be confirmed directly — most published aid programmes are framed around domestic financial need documentation.

Canadian hockey academies

Ontario Hockey Academy (OHA), Cornwall, ON: CAD $60,700 total for a Canadian boarding student (CAD $5,000 non-refundable deposit, CAD $33,500 academic/facility, CAD $11,500 hockey/travel, CAD $10,700 boarding/meals), plus a CAD $450–950 equipment fee. International/US rates are published on a separate page. Canadian International Hockey Academy (CIHA), Rockland, ON: CAD $48,900 boarding (Canadian) / CAD $52,900 (international); day options from CAD $22,500 to $37,900; an academic-only track at CAD $13,000. CIHA's own page states pricing is "subject to change without notice." Neither page clearly labels which exact academic year its published figure covers — confirm the current year directly before relying on either number.

Lower-cost day and hybrid models exist, but the data is thin

Not every academy is a full boarding campus. American Hockey Academy, run in partnership with CATS Academy of Boston, explicitly does not publish a price on its own tuition page — it states costs are available "by inquiry" only, which is itself the confirmed fact here: there is no public figure to cite. Other hybrid day-school-plus-training models exist but published, verifiable pricing for them could not be confirmed in this review; do not assume a lower-cost option automatically means a specific smaller number without asking the programme directly.

USA Hockey's National Team Development Program — a different category entirely

The NTDP is not a private pay-to-attend academy. It is USA Hockey's own elite, invitation-only national programme for the U17 and U18 age groups, based in Plymouth, Michigan, selecting two 23-player rosters per year through a multi-year scouting process. Players live with billet families. Search-indexed summaries of USA Hockey's own site describe the programme as free to play, with academics through a tuition-free virtual school — but every direct attempt to load USA Hockey's own pages for this guide was blocked, so this cost claim is not independently confirmed and should be verified directly with USA Hockey before being treated as settled. A frequently repeated "$50,000 early-exit fee" claim traces only to a single 2017 opinion piece, not to USA Hockey itself — do not treat that figure as fact.

What could not be confirmed

Avon Old Farms' tuition is reported inconsistently across secondary sources ($72,300–$81,185) and its own page could not be loaded directly for this review — no figure for this specific school is stated above for that reason. Victus Academy and Bishop Kearney Hockey TDP have published cost figures findable only via search snippets, not a directly-read official page, and are not included here. Treat any number for these programmes as unconfirmed until read on the school's own current page.

How to use this page

Every figure above is a specific, dated, named data point — not an average, and not a prediction of what a school will charge next year. Confirm the current academic year's tuition, what it includes and excludes (hockey fees, equipment, travel, insurance), and the international-student application process directly with the school's admissions office before treating any number as a budget figure.