Requests for sport-specific actions are prompting the Division III Championships Committee to broadly address several concerns -- including some reductions in at-large berths in championships that are linked to recent expansion of automatic qualification.

Although the committee made few championships policy decisions during its September meeting in Indianapolis, it also continued wrestling with such questions as how regional alignments impact the assignment and ranking teams within regions and who should be permitted within a team’s bench area during competition.

The committee did take a formal step toward dealing with a limited number of situations in which Pool C (as the at-large component of Division III championships is known) is shrinking as more schools affiliate with conferences that have automatic qualification to championships.

The committee, however, did not take the sport-specific step recommended earlier this summer by the Division III Men’s Golf Committee.

The Championships Committee decided to ask the Division III Management Council to give it authority to make limited adjustments in access ratios for championships that award automatic qualification to conference team champions while also selecting individuals to compete. Division III currently provides for automatic qualification in individual-team championships in men’s and women’s golf and tennis.

The men’s golf committee had asked the Championships Committee to adjust the 1:7.5 access ratio for the Division III Men’s Golf Championships (under which one team is selected for the event for every 7.5 schools that sponsor the sport) to 1:7.

Rather than take that step, the Championships Committee recommended that the Management Council revise administrative regulations to give the committee latitude within budget constraints to adjust the ratio for individual-team championships that award AQ to conferences to any point deemed appropriate between 1:7 and 1:7.5.

If the Council approves that request, the committee then could consider adjusting the ratio for men’s and women’s golf and tennis as needed.

Such an adjustment would have the effect of enlarging a championship’s bracket size, though the Championships Committee also would have to consider whether bracket expansion could be supported within Division III’s championships budget, which is determined every two years.

Next spring’s men’s golf championships will include 37 teams under the 1:7.5 ratio, including 27 that will qualify automatically through conferences (Pool A). Seven berths are available to teams from conferences that do not have automatic qualification or teams that are not affiliated with a conference (Pool B), while three berths will be allocated to Pool C.

To illustrate how a change in the ratio would impact bracket size, had the Championships Committee approved a 1:7 ratio for men’s golf, the championship would have gained a projected three additional berths for teams selected at large – a move the golf committee advocated to improve access for quality teams that are defeated in competition for automatic qualification but would be competitive in the national championship.

There currently is a similar concern in women’s golf, where the number of Pool C berths has dropped to two – the minimum that can be allocated in a Division III team championship. The Division III Women’s Golf Championships field will increase from 19 to 20 teams this year to maintain that minimum Pool C allocation.

Addressing other concerns, the Championships Committee also agreed to review Division III’s current regional structure for evaluating teams for championships, and further detailed its recently revised policy limiting the number of individuals who may be in the team bench area at championships.

The review of the regional structure was touched off by a variety of sport-specific recommendations requesting actions ranging from moving conference members in multistate leagues into the same region as other league members, to setting the number of teams that should be included in publicly released rankings.

Championships Committee members are interested in achieving more standardization in regionalization, ranging from assignment of schools to regions across sports to the number of teams publicly ranked -- and even to the naming of regions, which varies from sport to sport.

The committee did not set a timeline for completing the review, agreeing only to move forward with the effort.

Regarding bench size, the committee denied a specific request to allow additional student-athletes within the bench area in men’s lacrosse, deciding it will preserve its policy permitting only the travel party plus three individuals for indoor sports, travel party plus five for outdoor sports and travel party plus 10 for football.

It did, however, provide further definition of who must be included among the additional individuals. The policy dictates that two of those individuals must be medical staff members (typically athletic trainers). The committee clarified that physicians or other medical personnel who are present to provide services for the event, not just a team, do not have to be counted among the two medical staff members.

Other highlights

In other actions, the Championships Committee:

• Hosted its annual meeting with chairs of Division III sports committees to discuss championship policies and review sport-specific issues.
• Recommended to the Management Council an administrative regulation allowing sports committees to request permission to weight home and away games in the opponents’ average winning percentage (OWP) and opponents’ opponents’ average winning percentage (OOWP) in primary criteria for championships ranking and selection.
• Agreed to consider, for cases in which a Division III provisional member will become a conference’s seventh member for automatic-qualification purposes in a sport, whether that conference should be permitted to count the member’s third and fourth provisional year toward the league’s two-year waiting period to achieve AQ. The committee will consider whether to recommend changing an administrative regulation that currently requires the conference to wait two additional years after the institution achieves active membership.
• Directed the Division III Women’s Rowing Committee to maintain its regional-representation requirement for the rowing championships, under which each of the four rowing regions must be awarded at least one team berth. The rowing committee intended to let the requirement expire following a three-year trial.

Approved the Division III Women’s Tennis Committee’s recommendation to automatically select the top eight ranked singles players and top four ranked doubles teams from each of the four sport regions for the tennis championships. Previously, the top four singles and top two doubles teams automatically were selected, and the remaining berths were filled on an at-large basis. The action aligns the women’s selection process with the selection of  individual participants in the Division III Men’s Tennis Championships.