INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- After winning its fourth-straight SCAC Women's Tennis championship, the Trinity Tigers booked their ticket to compete in the 49-team NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championships, which is set to begin with the first-third round matchups this weekend, May 8-11. Interactive Bracket | NCAA Release
Trinity, which enters the NCAA Tournament as the 11th-ranked team in the ITA National Poll and third in the ITA West Regional poll, will be competing in the national tournament for the fourth year in a row and the 27th time in program history. Trinity owns seven NCAA Div. III Women’s Tennis semifinal appearances; two national runners-up finishes and a national title in 2000.
Trinity (20-4) received a first-round bye and will open play on Saturday at the Pauley Tennis Complex on the campus of Pomona-Pitzer in California, against Whitman (22-3). The Blues, ranked 17th in the most recent ITA rankings, earned the Northwest Conference's automatic bid after beating Pacific for their third straight NWC Tournament title. This will mark the first ever meeting between Trinity and Whitman in the NCAA Tournament and the first time the two conferences have faced each other in NCAA play.
The winner of Trinity/Whitman contest will take on the winner of host Pomona-Pitzer (13-7) versus the first-round match-up winner of East Texas Baptist University (8-6) and Edgewood (15-7) in the regional finals on Sunday with a trip to the national quarterfinal round on the line.
The teams will play a single-elimination tournament with the first, second, and third rounds played at regional sites, Friday-Sunday, May 9-11, or Thursday-Saturday, May 8-10. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges in Claremont, California, will host the team championships finals, which will be held May 19-22 at Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont, California. Student-athletes selected to the individual championships will be announced on Wednesday, May 7.
The championship provides for a 49-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 39 conference champions. The remaining ten teams will be selected from true independents, schools from conferences that do not have an automatic bid for their champions, and teams in conferences with an automatic bid that did not win their conferences AQ (At-Large). The teams are geographically paired whenever possible.
University of Chicago is the defending national champion, having defeated Wesleyan University 5-3 to claim the team title.
