The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- March 1, 1999

Women's volleyball panel maintains status quo on scoring

The Division I Women's Volleyball Committee during its annual meeting February 8-11 in Palm Springs, California, voted to retain the method of scoring for volleyball matches for the 1999 season.

The committee deferred a proposal to revise the way volleyball matches are scored and will request more research and feedback from institutions and conferences before reviewing the issue again before the 2000 season.

The decision resulted in part from coaches' feedback to a recent American Volleyball Coaches Association survey.

The committee will send information to conference offices in the near future requesting that experimental formats be used during spring play to further examine the issue. Two formats, a point-per-play and a timed match, likely will be offered for experimentation.

In other rules-related actions, the committee voted to vary from the National Association of Girls and Women in Sports Rules by maintaining the roster requirement for championship play. The number of team substitutions per match also was increased from 12 to 15.

Prematch protocol will be altered next year to be similar to the Division II format, with the minimum time between matches being reduced from 45 to 30 minutes.

Regarding future championships sites, the committee is recommending the University of New Orleans; Dallas; and Long Beach, California, as sites for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 championships, respectively. Those recommendations will be forward to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet for approval in July.

The committee also noted that the 1999 championship will include 31 automatic qualifiers, rather than 30, due to the addition of the Mountain West Conference. The remaining 33 teams in the 64-team bracket will be selected at large.