Sharon Pfluger is in the midst of her 20th season in charge of the field hockey program at The College of New Jersey. With well over 350 victories, seven NCAA Division III national championships and five undefeated seasons to her credit, Pfluger has seen a lot of field hockey.

Yet the passage of time hasn't dimmed her memories of the four years in the late 1970s and early 1980s she spent as a member of the field hockey and women's lacrosse squads at the school then known as Trenton State College. In fact, she remembers the records of each of those teams.

In 1981, Pfluger, then a senior, was a part of a Trenton State team that finished the season with a perfect 20-0 record.

"That was a dream season for us. For us to go undefeated, we hadn't seen seasons like that. The season before that we were 10-10-1," she said.

But the supreme achievement of engineering that undefeated season is nearly overshadowed by the fact that Trenton State made history that year by blanking Franklin and Marshall College, 2-0, to collect one of the first titles the NCAA awarded in women's championships.

During the 1981-82 academic year, the NCAA began cranking up the women's championships machine in earnest after a vote by Divisions II and III delegates during the 1980 NCAA Convention established women's championships in basketball, field hockey, swimming, tennis and volleyball. Before the 1981-82 season, teams in many sports were participating in championships through the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).

"We didn't realize it was making history until the season was over," said Pfluger. "We were excited to be in the NCAA because it opened up a lot of doors."

Joining Trenton State that season was Pfeiffer University, which defeated Bentley College, 5-3, to earn the Division II field hockey crown. In Division I, the University of Connecticut beat the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the title game.

Sue Caples, a member of the 1981 Massachusetts team and now the longtime head field hockey coach at Harvard University, noted that Massachusetts, the tournament's top seed, entered with the experience of having already participated in the AIAW.

"We were excited to be in the tournament and to be a part of history by being in the first NCAA tournament," said Caples. "It was just about playing for a championship."

Ultimately, Massachusetts fell, 4-1, to a Connecticut team that had shut out Purdue University and Old Dominion University in earlier rounds.

For Judy Strong, also a member of the 1981 Massachusetts squad, it wasn't the competition that added to the excitement of that first year under NCAA direction, but the knowledge that the NCAA was in charge.

"Thinking about the sponsorship with the NCAA being so well-known in everything it does, it was exciting being a part of something that was so well-established for other sports," said Strong. "It was a great feeling to be playing for that championship. As you look back, you can say you felt like a pioneer and breaking through, but I don't remember feeling that way then."

Strong, Caples and teammate Tish Stevens were on the first all-tournament team for Division I field hockey. Strong went on to earn a medal with the U.S. Field Hockey National Team at the 1984 Olympics and has been head coach at Smith College for 19 years.

The NCAA era of women's championships, and specifically for field hockey, ushered in a new tournament format very different from what squads had faced in AIAW competition, which according to Caples included three divisions and emphasized regional play. How a team finished regionally determined whether it continued to play. Sometimes teams would play two games a day.

<FONT FACE="New Baskerville" SIZE=2>Beth Anders, who coached Old Dominion to an appearance in one of the two national semifinal games in 1981, also remembers playing games on different surfaces.

"You might have been on turf. You might have been on grass," she said. "The format was definitely a big change, but very positive."

With the exception of a nine-year stretch between 1983 and 1992 when Divisions II and III combined to compete for a National Collegiate championship, each division has supported its own championship since 1981. Initially, Divisions I and III posted fields of six teams each. Four teams were invited to the Division II championship. The Divisions I, II and III tournaments currently feature fields of 16, six and 24, respectively.

Although Old Dominion came up short against eventual national champion Connecticut in the inaugural year of the championship, the following season the program picked up its first of nine national titles under Anders' leadership.

Of the three schools to take those first NCAA women's championship crowns, Connecticut and College of New Jersey have repeated as national champions, and many more teams have a chance to look forward to the experience as women's championships begin their second 25 years.

Said Anders, "The best is still in front of us. I wish I was a kid in high school now, quite frankly. It's just going to get better."