Members say recent sponsorship boom merits attention

The Division I Women's Golf Committee examined ways to increase access to the championship field during its June 7-9 meeting in Indianapolis.

Though it has not formally been asked by the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet to submit a plan for bracket expansion, the committee reviewed recent increases in sponsorship and noted that growth might be appropriate. For example, nine Division I institutions added women's golf in 2002-03 to bring total sponsorship to 216 teams, which is 66 percent of the membership and 24 teams higher than just three years ago. In the last decade, in fact, Division I women's golf sponsorship has grown by 72 teams (an increase of 20 percentage points).

The Division I Women's Golf Championships bracket currently is at 63 teams (21 teams in each of three regions). The Championships/Competition Cabinet reviews sports sponsorship annually and invites committees representing sports it believes warrant expansion to submit proposals. Women's golf committee members believe the high amount of sponsorship growth in a short time period is grounds for such consideration.

In other discussion, the committee reviewed championship selection criteria and seeding procedures but recommended no changes. Under current guidelines, the committee is allowed to seed 25 percent of the bracket (15 teams). Committee members feel comfortable with the current selection and seeding criteria and have decided to focus their efforts on access for more teams at the current time.

The committee also discussed a long-range planning issue, which is to consider regional realignment. Given the sport's recent growth, committee members believe it will be time in the near future to adjust the current regions to maintain competitive balance.

The group also discussed the advice rule, which currently allows one coach to advise players from the fairway only. Though there has been sentiment from the women's golf community to change the rule, there currently isn't a consensus approach among divisions (playing rules must be common among the three NCAA divisions). Proposals have varied from allowing coaches to give advice to players in sand traps and on greens, while other proposals favor one over the other, or retaining the status quo. At issue is whether allowing coaches more access to players beyond the fairway would slow the pace of play.

In addition, the committee submitted a recommendation to the cabinet regarding a new chair, since the term of current committee chair, Jan Mann, the head women's golf coach at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, will expire in September. Because of a new policy that requires sport committee chairs to be administrators (the committee received a waiver to appoint Mann on a one-year basis), the golf committee recommended co-chairs -- Barbara Camp, the senior woman administrator at Auburn University, and Robert Collins, an associate athletics director at Northern Illinois University.