The Division III Women’s Golf Committee used its annual meeting July 10-13 in Indianapolis to prepare for its first championships using automatic qualification.

The 2007 Division III Women’s Golf Championships at Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida (again hosted by Oglethorpe University and the Central Florida Sports Commission) will be the first conducted using the automatic qualifiers from Pool A, followed by at-large selections from Pools B and C. Previous championships have employed a regional-allocation format.

Eleven conferences applied for automatic qualification to the 2007 championships. The committee approved nine and indicated the remaining two would be finalized once the committee obtains further information.

To help the committee prepare for the AQ format, members conducted a mock selection using sponsorship numbers from 2005-06. The committee determined 11 selections from Pool A, three from Pool B and four from Pool C.

The only change the committee made to selection criteria for 2007 was to move comparison with common opponents above in-region and overall win-loss record when evaluating teams after the first run through the criteria has produced a tie.

Committee members determined that once the field is selected, teams will be seeded based on final head-to-head rankings from Golfstat.

The committee also discussed a request from the Division III Championships Committee to consider limiting the nontraditional segment to five weeks in the fall, with 16 days of athletically related activity and one date of competition. But the golf committee supports the current model of 19 weeks for the entire season, giving each institution the flexibility to determine how those weeks will be used in the fall and spring.

Committee members thought the five-week model would lead to more missed class time, since many institutions would try to complete their current fall schedules in the shorter time frame. They also thought it would limit playing opportunities for institutions in some regions because of weather conditions and lack of control of facilities.

In other action, the golf committee renamed its numerically based region structure to the following geographically based system: East (formerly Region 1), Great Lakes (formerly Region 2), Central (formerly Region 3), Midwest (formerly Region 4) and West (formerly Region 5). The composition in each region will remain the same.

The committee also voted to disallow the use of range finders during championships competition other than practice rounds. Members also voted to allow only the designated coach to give advice to participants during the championships.

The group also elected Vince Lazar, head women’s golf coach at DePauw University, as chair of the committee, succeeding Darla Kirby of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor when her term as chair expires September 1.