The committee developed the policy at its annual meeting July 9-12 in Indianapolis.

"As a committee, we felt it is the responsibility of an NCAA member to report the scores to the regional committees," said Gretchen Weitbrecht, committee chair and head softball coach at John Carroll University. "For us to be as accurate as possible, we need to have this information. It just makes our jobs more efficient and worthwhile. We want people to know how important this is even if they don't believe they are in the running for a championship berth."

The financial penalty has not been used in the past, and the committee wants to guarantee consistent reporting.

The committee also decided to furnish institutions an alphabetical list, with regional references, of all the teams that were in the top five for their region before the championship in order to help teams schedule quality opponents. The list will be released at the end of championship play.

In other actions, the committee will recommend to the Division III Championships Committee that the Little East Conference be moved from the Northeast to the New England region. The conference requested that because of the distance between league members and other Northeast competitors. The realignment will allow the conference to schedule games against the top in-region teams for championship-selection purposes.

The committee also recommended to the Championships Committee that regional start times be two hours apart, as at the national championship. The consistency will help teams prepare for the finals schedule.

Also, although there will be no format changes for the championship itself, the committee will limit the number of banquet speakers at the finals to two per team.