The Division III Championships Committee has approved a two-year waiver request from the Division III Women’s Golf Committee that relaxes automatic-qualification requirements conferences need to meet in that sport.

The action taken during an August 18 conference call allows institutions to count contests in which only four golfers participate (rather than the standard five) for postseason-selection purposes. That in turn relieves conferences that have been struggling to meet AQ standards.

In essence, the waiver extends what has been a three-year grace period for the AQ model in women’s golf through the 2009-10 and 2010-11 academic years.

The issue became nettlesome as a number of Division III women’s golf programs scrambled to compete in at least six tournaments with five golfers to qualify for postseason selection. A failure by an institution to meet that requirement can affect whether a conference would have seven members eligible for the championships under AQ requirements. Of the 11 conferences that were granted automatic qualification last year, six would not be renewed if the five-person roster were required this year.

The golf committee asked the Championships Committee for the waiver not only to provide immediate relief but also as the best option to grow the game. The sport committee reasoned that programs would still be encouraged to reach a five-woman roster for competitive reasons (in golf, teams play five but count only the top four scores), but the waiver would assist teams or conferences that are making an effort but currently struggling to meet the standards.

In granting the waiver, the Championships Committee made it clear that it was intended as temporary relief rather than a permanent solution.

The group also emphasized that the waiver did not mean a retreat from current requirements for counting women’s golf toward Division III’s sports-sponsorship requirements. Under the relaxed standards, there will be teams that can help their conferences meet AQ requirements in the sport but cannot count women’s golf toward meeting sport-sponsorship requirements for Division III membership, which still require five student-athletes to participate in at least six competitions.

The Championships Committee talked briefly about whether the five-person roster requirement is appropriate for golf as a sport-sponsorship standard but noted that would be an issue for the Division III Membership Committee to decide.

In a related action, the committee agreed that the bracket size for the 2010 and 2011 Division III Women’s Golf Championships will be calculated from the number of teams that had at least four participants complete at least one contest or 18-hole round of golf during 2008-09. As a result, the bracket would include 19 teams, based on a ratio of one team for every 7.5 schools meeting that standard.

Championships sites

In other actions, the Division III Championships Committee approved sites for championships during the coming year in men’s and women’s swimming and diving and women’s tennis.

The committee:

• Approved a joint Division III Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships for the second consecutive year, with Beloit serving as host for the March 17-20, 2010, event at the same site as the 2009 championships – the University Aquatic Center in Minneapolis.
• Approved the Battlefield Complex in Fredricksburg, Virginia, as the site for the 2010 Division III Women’s Tennis Championships, with Mary Washington serving as host.