2022 Tournament Preview (Rest of Year)

This is going to be a short one. How do I know? Because I’m writing this article directly into the WordPress editor and not Word. I’m cutting out the middle man on this one and passing the savings on to you!

I’ve covered the tournaments from the first two weekends here and here. This article will cover the rest of the year and since it’s a short article, there must not be very many tournaments after the first two weeks. The ASC and NWC are done at this point. Heck, some in the ASC were done after week one! Here’s what I found:

Trinity Tournament (September 16th) hosted by Trinity

La Verne, Juniata, Southwestern, Scranton, TLU and Trinity

Nice job by Trinity with this tournament on week three. Both Scranton and Juniata were regionally ranked in Region V last year and both should be good this season. Kudos to La Verne for making the trip and really putting the finishing touches on a nice schedule for them. Trinity, once again, will have one of the tougher schedules in the nation in 2022 and Southwestern’ s schedule isn’t too bad, either. TLU gets a nice weekend of matches here and they will be a tough opponent for these teams.

Cal Lu Fornia Tournament (September 16th) hosted by Cal Lutheran

Cal Lutheran, CMS, Colorado College, Endicott, Minnesota-Morris Pomona-Pitzer and UC Santa Cruz

This annual tournament sports the best name of any tournament. Nice haul getting Endicott to fly out and shout out to them for the effort. They are always a quality team and should be regionally ranked in Region II as they were last season. Minnesota-Morris had an average year last season but the hope is that they will rebound and also be regionally ranked. Colorado College comes down offer their mountain to get plenty of nice matches against the SCIAC powers. They then make the rare additional effort of playing Chapman on Sunday after this tournament. This tournament has 5 regionally ranked teams from last season so lots of good matches on display.

Trinity Tournament (October 14th) hosted by Trinity

Susquehanna, Trinity and UC Santa Cruz

Trinity doesn’t quit bringing teams in when they can. They will become honorary members of Region V as they get another 2021 ranked team in Susquehanna coming to their place. UC Santa Cruz was ranked in Region VI so three for three in this small “tournament”. There were a couple of one day trips done by other teams in the West but this one stood out for mention.

The only other possible tournament I saw was Austin College going to Hendrix to play them and Champions Baptist on October 7th but it’s not on the Hendrix schedule so it may just be wishful thinking at this point.

And, that’s it. I told you this would be short. It’s kind of sad because the October tournaments were always fun and a nice break from conference. We typically saw UT-Dallas and a number of SCAC schools play in these when the ASC didn’t have such a full conference schedule. The SCAC is the last conference in the West not to play home and away as they still meet in pods to play 3 or 4-matches on a weekend. This allows them more flexibility during the year, but I’m assuming the tightening of the athletic budgets is the reason for really only Trinity and Colorado College still doing them.

No idea if I’ll make any of these. Trinity’s is always a possibility but that Cal Lu tournament would be fun, too.

Oh, welcome to August everyone! If we can just get through this month then it becomes volleyball season!