After more than a year of consideration and discussion, the Division II spring sports festival is officially a go for May 2004.

The Division II Championships Committee, meeting in a series of conference calls September 17-19, agreed that the event will be conducted in mid-May and will include the following championships: men's and women's golf, women's lacrosse, women's softball, and men's and women's tennis.

"We're very excited about this," said Lisa C. Colvin, Division II Management Council vice-chair and chair of the Championships Committee. "We've talked to administrators and student-athletes and they're excited about it. This started out in the Management Council, and we all had a lot of questions about where this might go, but it has blossomed into a super opportunity for Division II."

The men's lacrosse and women's rowing championships are conducted concurrently with the Divisions I and III championships, and neither sports committee wanted to disturb those relationships. Colvin said that baseball is reluctant to move from a successful site in Montgomery, Alabama, while the track committee thought that moving the date of its championships from their traditional Memorial Day weekend slot would cause too many problems with the regular season.

The Championship Committee agreed that the sports festival will be conducted once every four years.

"We asked the student-athletes which they would prefer -- to have this once every four years or to have it annually, and they said they wanted it to be a special occasion that they would experience once in their careers," Colvin said. The sports committees also expressed a preference for the quadrennial concept, she said.

Tom Jacobs, NCAA director of championships and liaison to the Division II Championships Committee, said that more than 600 student-athletes will participate in the festival.

"We feel like that is a good impact for any community that might be interested in hosting this event," he said.

"That would give the city hosting the site about a year and a half of lead time," Jacobs said.

Colvin said the committee settled on a spring festival because it is the time of year when similar events typically are conducted, but she said that the concept should not necessarily be limited to springtime. She said one possibility might be to conduct spring festivals and fall festivals once every four years in two-year intervals (for example, spring in 2004, fall in 2006, spring in 2008, etc.).

Other business

The committee originally had been scheduled to meet September 16-19 in Indianapolis, but the in-person version of the meeting was canceled after the September 11 disasters in New York City and Wash-
ington, D.C. The committee met instead through a series of conference calls and deferred decisions on any budgetary matters until its January meeting.

Among the matters that were considered was a referral from the Division II Presidents Council about discontinuing the practice of announcing before the start of competition whether drug testing will be conducted at a championship. The NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports had recommended the change to all three divisions in the belief that eliminating the announcement would enhance the deterrent value of drug testing. The Division II Management Council approved the recommendation, but Divisions I and III defeated it. With the understanding that Division II was in a different place on the proposal, the Division II Presidents Council referred it back to the Championships Committee.

After considering the matter, the committee agreed to retain the announcement for the 2001-02 championships. However, it recommended that the proposal be considered again for implementation in the 2002-03 academic year.

The Championships Committee also addressed a discrepancy in the way its authority to resolve conflict is described in different sections of the Division II Manual. The committee is recommending that legislation be proposed to make it clear that disputes involving automatic qualification, realignment and misconduct first would be considered by the appropriate sports committee. Then, if the affected institution was not satisfied, the decision could be appealed to the Championships Committee, which would have final authority.

In other business, the committee delayed until January its review of sport-sponsorship trends and how they relate to bracket expansions or increases in field size. Because of the change to a two-year budget cycle, the committee henceforth will consider bracket expansion in September of odd-numbered years.

The committee also examined how selection criteria are applied when sports committees are determining teams for championships. In addition to the criteria identified in Bylaw 31, the committee advised sports committees that they should consider Division II in-region won-lost records. Also, other than automatic qualifiers, all teams selected for Division II championships should have records above .500 vs. Division II opponents.

Sports committees without clearly defined strength-of-schedule standards also will receive a directive from the Championships Committee asking them to give consideration to developing more detailed information.

Other highlights

Division II Championships Committee
Conference call/September 17-19