The Division III Championships Committee took the first official steps toward establishing a championships budget for the two years beginning in fall 2006 during its September 19-21 meeting in Indianapolis.

After an unprecedented "summit" meeting with chairs of Division III sports committees, the Championships Committee ranked a set of priorities for the next two-year budget cycle -- topped by another increase in student-athlete per diem.

Division III's ability to pay for the newly ranked initiatives depends on availability of funds beyond those that already have been committed to recently legislated initiatives -- notably this year's expansion of team sport championships brackets and next year's implementation of automatic qualification in golf and tennis.

However, preliminary indications are that the committee will be able to recommend an increase in per diem from $70 to $75 -- the third $5 per day increase in three years for championships participants -- and also likely will be able to recommend across-the-board increases in fees for officials who work Division III championships.

Both priorities address the Championships Committee's objective of improving the student-athlete experience at championships, by covering more of participants' daily expenses at championships and improving the quality of competition by obtaining the best officiating available.

Other committee priorities for funding include participant awards for all student-athletes who are selected to compete in championships, an increase in officials' per diem, and increases in the travel party for four sports that currently are permitted fewer than the Division III team championships norm of five nonstudent-athletes.

The committee also hopes to predetermine preliminary-round sites in the Division III Softball Championship and to increase the field size for the Division III Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships for the first time since 1999, beginning in 2006-07.

The committee endorsed predetermination of all eight preliminary-round sites for softball, and also supported expanding predetermination to all eight preliminary-round sites in the Division III Baseball Championship, which currently is authorized to predetermine five sites.

The Championships Committee will make formal budget recommendations for the next biennial during its January 2006 meeting.

The ranking of priorities was affected by input from sports committee chairs, who participated in a first-ever gathering of representatives from all Division III sports committees September 19. The Championships Committee previously has met with smaller groups of committee chairs, but this marked the first time that all committees were gathered together in a single session.

The committee chairs also shared information about activities and issues related to their specific championships during the "summit" session.

Convention proposals

The Championships Committee also reviewed four proposals for the 2006 Convention that are sponsored by member conferences and that would affect administration of championships.

The committee recommended that the Division III Management and Presidents Council oppose all four proposals, including:

* A proposal by the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin, the Northwest Conference and the University Athletic Association to eliminate from the Division III philosophy statement the emphasis on in-region competition, and to also remove the in-region concept from the selection process for all team championships.

Championships Committee members cited efforts currently underway to permit more flexibility in counting contests as in-region -- including a recommendation to the Management Council to permit designation of games played outside a region during a defined institutional break period as in-region contests -- and strong support for the in-region philosophy indicated in last year's Future of Division III membership survey as reasons for their opposition to the proposal.

* Proposals by the Empire 8 to preserve automatic qualification (AQ) for a conference that temporarily fails to meet the seven-school sponsorship requirement and by the Commonwealth Coast Conference to grant AQ eligibility to newly formed conferences during a two-year period beginning in August 2006.

The Championships Committee saw merits in both proposals, but prefers an approach sponsored by the Division III Presidents Council that would require conferences to evaluate shared philosophy and practices through a new Conference Self-Study Guide (CSSG), then allow a two-year period after completion of that study for conference realignment without loss of AQ. Committee members believe that adoption of one or both of the conferences' proposals could conflict with the self-study process.

* A proposal by the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin, the Ohio Athletic Conference and the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to include a "strength-of-season index" among primary selection criteria for Pools B and C.

The committee believes that recent revision of existing selection criteria to include opponents' opponents' records as a primary criterion beginning in 2006-07 will ease the impact of losses within stronger conferences on teams' winning percentage, thus addressing concerns of the proposal's sponsors. The committee also continues to study use of opponents' average winning percentage as a criterion.

The committee hopes to complete expansion of championships field sizes and discussions of possible conference realignments before further adjusting selection criteria.

The committee's positions on the proposals will be considered by the Management Council October 17-18 and the Presidents Council October 27.

Golf and tennis

The Championships Committee also agreed to proceed later this fall with a survey authorized by the Management Council to determine interest in scheduling Division III golf and tennis championships during the fall.

The survey, which will be mailed to athletics directors, also will seek to measure support for clearly defining traditional and nontraditional seasons in those sports, in terms of length and amount of competition allowed.

A significant percentage of institutions currently sponsoring the sport play primarily during the fall. The question has taken on additional significance with next year's imple-
mentation of automatic qualification in the sports, and the likelihood that a number of qualifiers for the spring championships will be determined in competition conducted several months before the national championship.

The Championships Committee also approved several recommendations from the Division I Men's and Women's Golf Committees and the tennis committee, including:

* Elimination of the automatic bid currently granted annually to the host of the men's golf championships, effective in 2007.

* Expansion of the number of selected individuals who are not competing for teams at the women's golf championships from 10 to 12, effective in 2007.

* A change in match scoring in the men's team championships from the seven-point to nine-point system, which currently is employed in the women's championships.

The Championships Committee also agreed to support a recommendation to divide the Division III tennis committee into separate men's and women's committees, noting that the committees would continue to meet jointly for their annual meetings and that the action serves to clarify responsibilities for the men's and women's championships.

Other highlights

Division III Championships Committee
September 19-21/Indianapolis

• Approved in concept proposed selection criteria for determining advancement beginning in 2006 from regional meets to the Division III Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships, pending receipt of plans from the Division III Men's and Women's Track and Field Committee for allocating additional team and individual berths that may be budgeted for each of the championships in 2007. For the 24-team format that still will be in place in 2006, the track and field committee proposed automatically advancing the top two finishers in each of eight regions, and using selection criteria to select teams for the remaining eight at-large berths. Those criteria (not listed in preferential order) are regional place finish, late-season performance, head-to-head competition with teams already qualified for the championship and with other potential at-large teams, the gap in time at the regional meet between a team's first and fifth runners, point gaps between teams and individual members of those teams at the regional meet, and late-season meet point gaps between teams. Forty individuals (five from each region) who are not members of advancing teams also automatically would advance to the national championship, and seven remaining individual berths would be filled using selection criteria.

• Responding to a request from the Division III Management Council, agreed to review available historical data regarding missed class time due to participation in championship competition on Friday-Saturday compared to Saturday-Sunday, and to analyze the anticipated impact during 2005-06 of existing legislation requiring accommodation of institutions with written policies against championships competition on a particular day for religious reasons.

• Recommended to the Management Council the selection of the United States Tennis Association National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadow, New York, as the site of the 2007 Division III Men's and Women's Tennis Championships, with Stevens Institute of Technology serving as host; also recommended selection of the Battleground Athletic Complex in Fredricksburg, Virginia, as the site of the 2008 women's tennis championships, with the University of Mary Washington serving as host.

• Recommended selection of facilities in Salem, Virginia, as sites for the 2006 and 2007 Division III Football Championship Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl and the 2007 and 2008 Division III Women's Softball Championship finals, with the city of Salem and the Old Dominion Athletics Conference serving as co-hosts for the events.

• Recommended selection of the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, as host of the 2007 and 2008 Division III Men's and Women's Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

• Recommended selection of M&T Bank Stadium, site of the 2007 Division I and II Men's La-
  crosse Championships, as the site of that year's Division III championship, and Gillette Stadium in Boston, which also will host the Divisions I and II events, as the Division III championship site in 2008.

• Approved the use of seven-man officiating crews in the Division III Football Championship, effective in 2007.

• Pending availability of funds, granted flexibility to the Division III Women's Ice Hockey Committee to provide a region that has not hosted the championship final during the past three years with an opportunity to do so.