INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- After winning its second-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 4-7. Interactive Bracket | NCAA Release
Trinity, which enters the NCAA Tournament as the 16th-ranked team in the ITA National Poll and third in the ITA West Regional poll, will be competing in the national tournament for the second year in a row and the 25th 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.
The teams will play a single-elimination tournament with the first, second- and third-rounds played at regional sites, Friday-Sunday, May 5-7, or Thursday-Saturday, May 4-6. The United States Tennis Association, Oglethorpe University and the Greater Orlando Sports Commission will host the team championships finals, which will be held May 14-22 at USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida. Student-athletes selected to the individual championships will be announced Wednesday, May 3.
Trinity received a first-round bye and will open play on Saturday at University of Texas-Dallas in Richardson, Texas, against Pomona-Pitzer. Pomona-Pitzer, ranked third in the most recent ITA National Poll and second in the ITA West Regional Poll received one of the eight NCAA Poll C bids following a 13-8 year. The winner of the Trinity/Pomona-Pitzer contest will take on the winner of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (22-1) versus the first-round match-up winner of host Texas-Dallas (12-6) and Whitman (13-5) in the regional finals on Sunday with a trip to the national quarterfinal round on the line.
The Trinity and Pomona-Pitzer women's tennis teams are familiar with one another in NCAA Tournament action as 2023 marks the fourth time in the last six NCAA Tournaments the two squads have faced one another and the sixth time overall. The Tigers are 1-4 in the previous four matchups against the Sagehens with the lone Trinity victory coming back in 2000, 8-1, on its way to a national championship.
The championships provide for a 49-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 40 conference champions, which form "Pool A." One team will be selected from true independents and schools from conferences that do not have an automatic bid for their champions (Pool B). The remaining eight teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference's AQ and the remaining Pool B institutions (Pool C). The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.
Claremont-M-S is the defending national champion, having defeated University of Chicago, 5-1, to claim the team title.
