The Division II Men’s and Women’s Tennis Committees are recommending a reduction in the brackets of both championships.

The committees crafted the recommendation during their annual meeting last month in response to a request from the Division II Championships Committee, which along with the Legislation Committee is charged with leading the division’s “Life in the Balance” review of playing and practice seasons.

The Divisions I and III men’s and women’s tennis committees also met, with Division I discussing preliminary-round site selection and Division III focusing on selections for singles and double play.

If the Division II bracket reductions are approved, the women’s bracket will be reduced to 48 teams and the men’s bracket will fall to either 48 or 32 squads, effective with the 2010-11 season. Both championships currently host 64-team fields.

Because the NCAA does not fund the regional rounds of the championship, the committee believes smaller brackets will bring some relief to institutions’ travel budgets. The committee also is asking that regional dates be pushed back one week to mitigate some of the expense related to arranging championships-related travel on as little as two days’ notice.

The Division II committee is also asking the Playing Rules Oversight Panel to approve conditions for teams that violate the uniform policy that would subject them to the point penalty system.

Although institutions that do not conform to the policy are fined under the current rules, violations still occur. Jared Mosely, chair of the committee and director of athletics at Abilene Christian, said the proposed change would clarify standards for teams while also giving the committee a defined set of parameters when enforcing the penalty. 

“A lot of institutions were perfectly fine paying the financial penalty and moving on,” said Mosely. “But if teams are going to be assessed a point penalty in match play at a national championship event, they are going to comply. If they don’t, they are going to find their time at the national championships pretty short-lived with the enforcement of this rule.”

Division III actions

The Division III Women’s Tennis Committee recommended an adjustment in its selection process for the singles and doubles draws to align with the way men’s singles and doubles participants are chosen. The recommendation, subject to approval by the Division III Championships Committee, calls for selecting eight singles players and four doubles teams per region, effective for the 2010 championships. Under the current women’s selection process, four singles and two doubles teams are chosen from each region while the other half of the field is selected at-large.

The proposal is rooted in a broader effort to more closely align Division III men’s and women’s tennis, said Ohio Northern’s Scott Wills, who chairs the committee. “One of our main focuses has been on increasing the communication between the men’s and women’s committees to find where we have differences and why. If there is a best practice, whether it’s from the men’s side, women’s side or a combination, then we want to try to adopt it.”

In an extension of that concept, both committees also are seeking to jump-start a broader discussion with the Divisions I and II men’s and women’s tennis committees regarding mutual goals, such as a consistent scoring system.

Currently, Divisions II and III use a nine-point scoring system in which one point is awarded for each of three doubles matches and for each of the singles contests. In Division I, the team that wins two of the three doubles matches earns one point, while each singles match accounts for one point. The Division III committees believe that establishing a consistent way of scoring matches will make the sport more attractive to both student-athletes and spectators.

“The Division III tennis committees believe that having multiple scoring methodologies works against the general education of prospective student-athletes and our general fan base,” said Wills. “If we can look at best practices, establish commonalities and have some continuity over time, it not only benefits the student-athletes’ education but the entire college tennis community.”

The committees also agreed to accelerate plans for a joint championship. Although the groups already plan to pursue a joint men’s and women’s championship in 2012, the committees will issue a request this fall for bids to host the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals of the 2011 men’s and women’s team championships in addition to all rounds of the singles and doubles championships.

The 2010 championships will be at Mary Washington.

Division I actions

The Divisions I Men’s and Women’s Tennis Committees agreed to forward to the Division I Championships/Sport Management Cabinet two recommendations from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association related to hosting and bracketing.

One recommendation would guarantee that the top 16 teams would host the first and second rounds of the championships, regardless of geographic location. The second recommendation would maintain the four bands of 16 teams, but when assigning teams to the first- and second-round sites, teams seeded 1-8 would be matched with teams 25-32 and teams seeded 9-16 would be matched with teams seeded 17-24. However, teams in the third and fourth bands would continue to be assigned based on the geographic principles detailed in Bylaw 31.1.3.2.4.

Both recommendations carry a 2010 effective date.

A third recommendation is an increased stipend for first- and second-round hosts, effective in 2011. Stipends for sites hosting single-gender contests would increase to $5,000 and stipends for dual-gender sites would increase to $9,000 (up from $4,500 and $8,000, respectively). In addition, the committees eliminated the requirement that first- and second-round sites host a team reception/banquet.

In other actions, the committees recommended that the Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet approve the automatic qualification waiver requests from America East and the Big West, which are included in the overall request for approval of the automatic qualification for 31 conferences, effective for the 2010 men’s and women’s tennis championships.