INDIANAPOLIS — Top-ranked defending national champion Virginia Wesleyan heads a powerful 62-team field for the 2018 NCAA Division III Softball Championship, chosen by the NCAA Division III Softball Committee and announced Monday at NCAA.com.
Forty-two conferences received an automatic qualification (Pool A), while one institution, Emory, was selected from Pool B, which includes independent institutions and institutions from conferences that do not meet the automatic qualification criteria. The 19 remaining teams in the tournament field were selected on an at-large basis from automatic qualifying conferences and the remaining institutions in the Pool B category.
The regional round will be held May 11-13. Four teams each will compete at 14 regional sites and three teams each will compete at two regional sites. One of the two three-team regional pods includes all three perennial Texas powerhouses — No. 2-ranked Texas Lutheran (the host school), third-ranked Texas-Tyler (the 2016 national champion) and No. 14 East Texas Baptist (the 2010 national champion).
The regional sites at Holland, Mich., and St. Paul, Minn., will be conducted Thursday-Saturday, while the other 14 locations will play Friday-Sunday.
The team advancing from each regional will compete in the super regional round on May 18 and 19. The eight-team NCAA Championship, hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma and the Oklahoma City All-Sports Association, will be held May 24-29 at the USA Softball Hall of Fame Complex in Oklahoma City. All rounds will use a double-elimination format.
2018 NCAA Division III Softball Championship Bracket
The conferences and teams that received automatic qualification were:
Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference – Mount Aloysius
American Southwest Conference – Texas-Tyler
Capital Athletic Conference – Christopher Newport
Centennial Conference – Gettysburg
City University of New York Athletic Conference – Staten Island
College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin – Illinois Wesleyan
Colonial States Athletic Conference – Immaculata
Commonwealth Coast Conference – Western New England
Empire 8 – St. John Fisher
Great Northeast Athletic Conference – Johnson & Wales (Rhode Island)
Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference – Franklin
Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Luther
Landmark Conference – Moravian
Liberty League – Ithaca
Little East Conference – Massachusetts Boston
Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference – Framingham State
Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association – Hope
Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth – Messiah
Middle Atlantic Conference Freedom – Manhattanville
Midwest Conference – Cornell College
Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – St. Thomas (Minnesota)
New England Collegiate Conference – Bay Path
New England Small College Athletic Conference – Williams
New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference – MIT
New Jersey Athletic Conference – Rowan
North Atlantic Conference – Husson
North Coast Athletic Conference – DePauw
North Eastern Athletic Conference – Penn State-Berks
Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference – Benedictine (Illinois)
Northwest Conference – Linfield
Ohio Athletic Conference – Ohio Northern
Old Dominion Athletic Conference – Virginia Wesleyan
Presidents’ Athletic Conference – Thomas More
Skyline Conference – Mount Saint Mary (New York)
Southern Athletic Association – Berry
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference – Texas Lutheran
St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Greenville
State University of New York Athletic Conference – SUNY Geneseo
Upper Midwest Athletic Conference – Northwestern-St. Paul
USA South Athletic Conference – Maryville (Tennessee)
Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference – Wisconsin-Whitewater
The institution selected from Pool B was:
Emory
The 19 institutions selected from Pool C were:
Amherst
Calvin
Case Western Reserve
Central (Iowa)
Coe
East Texas Baptist
George Fox
Lake Forest
Lynchburg
The College of New Jersey
Ramapo
Randolph-Macon
Saint Benedict
St. Mary’s (Indiana)
Salisbury
Transylvania
Trine
Tufts
Wisconsin-Oshkosh
The regional sites and host schools are:
Atlanta – Emory
Bloomington, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan
Cambridge, Mass. – MIT
Decorah, Iowa – Luther
Ewing, N.J. – The College of New Jersey
Glassboro, N.J. – Rowan
*Holland, Mich. – Hope
Ithaca, N.Y. – Ithaca
McMinnville, Ore. – Linfield
Newport News, Va. – Christopher Newport
Notre Dame, Ind. – St. Mary’s (Indiana)
Rochester, N.Y. – St. John Fisher
*St. Paul, Minn. – St. Thomas (Minnesota)
Seguin, Texas – Texas Lutheran
Whitewater, Wis. – Wisconsin-Whitewater
Williamstown, Mass. – Williams
* The regional sites at Holland, Mich. and St. Paul, Minn. will be conducted Thursday (May 10)-Saturday (May 12).
To watch a replay of the NCAA selection show, click HERE
— Information courtesy of NCAA.com