NCAA Women's Water Polo Committee Chair Dan Smith said it was easy to see the effect of last year's expanded championship bracket on student-athletes. All it took was looking at their faces.

"Just to see the feeling, not only on the part of the student-athletes, but also the coaches -- how much it meant to them to be there participating -- it really gave you a sense of what we're all about and what we're supposed to be doing," said Smith, associate athletics director at Loyola Marymount University.

For the first time in 2005, the championship field included eight teams that played out to all eight places. Before, the field included four teams -- three automatic bids and one at-large team. With the expansion, five conferences received automatic bids and three teams were named as at-large qualifiers.

The championship also expanded from a two-day to a three-day format, with four games each day. The 2005 at-large teams were the University of Hawaii, Manoa; the University of Southern California; and Stanford University.

Smith credited his predecessors on the women's water polo committee and Dan Sharadin, current commissioner of the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA), with laying the groundwork for the expansion.

An important element of the larger championship bracket is ensuring that qualified teams are afforded the opportunity to participate. Stanford women's water polo coach John Tanner said the 2005 semifinal matches were highly competitive.

"As such, there is less chance that a team that is truly in the running for the national championship would be excluded," Tanner said. "I think that was the problem with just four teams. With eight, it seems more likely that a team on the fringe won't get left out."

Doubling the opportunities

Without question, the expansion created more opportunities for women to compete in the NCAA championship. Jamey Wright, women's water polo coach at the University of California, Davis, and former member of the water polo committee, said that adding teams to the championship invigorated the sport. The women's water polo championship is a National Collegiate championship, with institutions from all three divisions eligible to participate.

"It was hard to really call it that when Division III teams never got in there," Wright said. "Now, having the (Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) receive an automatic bid, you're basically guaranteeing every year that there's going to be a Division III team in there, or they've at least got a very good shot if their conference is selected to get an automatic bid.

"In one swoop, we've done a great job of dramatically increasing the exposure from the outside in and also from the inside out. Teams are much more excited about the possibility of making the NCAAs because they've got a better chance within their conference."

More teams are participating in the championship, which translates into more areas of the country being interested in the sport. Wright likened the increased bracket size in women's water polo to the expansion of the Major League Baseball playoffs in the 1990s. Before expansion, he said only four areas of the country were excited about baseball -- those near the four participating teams.

"The rest of the country just had sort of a tangential excitement. Now, with eight teams, you've doubled the geographic excitement and (in the case of women's water polo) the conference excitement much more so than you would have before," he said. "It would be easy for it to be the same four teams every year or four of the same five or six teams every year. Now you've got eight teams coming and there's a lot more variables. It just makes it more enjoyable because there are more teams in the mix."

Expanding the sport, too

Smith said that the Western Water Polo Association, in which Loyola Marymount competes, recently welcomed Colorado State University as a new member.

"It surprised me that they would add women's water polo in an area like that where there aren't many teams competing (in intercollegiate women's water polo)," he said. "That's a sign that schools out there are at least considering adding the sport."

Many believe the changes will contribute to future growth of the sport as well because the promise of better access to a championship is enticing to schools considering adding a women's water polo program to their athletics department.

"Schools that are in these five (automatic qualifying) conferences that don't offer women's water polo, they realize now that their conference has a bid to the NCAA championship, or has historically received a bid to the championship and probably would continue to receive that bid. They could think, 'Wow, let's add women's water polo here because we have a pretty good chance. If we improve our program and add a women's team, we have an avenue to a championship,' " said Wright.

Smith said if an institution already has a swimming pool, women's water polo start-up costs are lower than in many other sports that require a lot of equipment.

The expansion also could convince traditional conferences that don't offer a women's water polo conference championship to investigate the possibilities of creating one. Committee members are keeping a close eye on conferences like the Big West Conference, the California Collegiate Athletic Association and the Big Ten Conference. Institutions that belong to all three of those traditional conferences field women's water polo teams that participate in other conferences.

For example, the University of Michigan, a Big Ten member and host of the 2005 championship, competes as part of the CWPA. The Wolverines are joined in the CWPA by fellow Big Ten institution Indiana University, Bloomington. And five of eight schools in the Big West have women's water polo teams. Smith believes the Big West could eventually add the sport as a conference championship.

Smith hopes institutions and conferences continue to observe the development of the sport and contemplate adding more women's water polo programs nationwide.

"I would hope this expansion signals to the membership that we support this growth, that we want to see continuous growth and that schools should seriously consider it," he said. "One of the things I try to keep in mind when we're making decisions -- whether it's here on my campus or whether it's relative to the (women's water polo) committee -- the decisions we should be making should benefit the student-athletes who play the game. The decision to expand the bracket without a doubt benefited a larger group of women who have worked very hard to excel at their sport.

"If you were at that championship and you could see the looks on their faces and how happy they were and how hard they were competing, you would know that this was a good decision."