INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- After winning its eighth-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 10-12. Interactive Bracket | NCAA Release
Trinity, which enters the NCAA Tournament as the 17th-ranked team in the ITA National Poll and fourth in the ITA West Regional Poll, will be competing in the national tournament for the eighth year in a row and the 23rd 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, while their 2018 appearance resulted in an exit after the second round with a 5-0 loss against Pomona-Pitzer.
The teams will play a single-elimination tournament with the first, second- and third-rounds played at regional sites, Friday-Sunday, May 10-12, or Thursday-Saturday, May 9-11. Kalamazoo College will host the team championships finals, which will be held May 20-22 at Stowe Stadium in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Student-athletes selected to the individual championships will be announced Wednesday, May 8.
Trinity received a first-round bye and will open play on Saturday at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in Claremont, Calif., against Pomona-Pitzer. Pomona-Pitzer, ranked fifth 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 15-5 year. The winner of the Trinity/Pomona-Pitzer contest will take on the winner of host Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (23-1) versus the first-round match-up winner of Linfield (17-2) and UT-Dallas (11-1) 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 2019 marks the third consecutive season the two squads have faced one another and the fifth time overall. The Tigers are 1-3 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 8 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 Emory, 5-4, to claim the team title.
