NCAA Brackets – Done!

I didn’t plan it this way but two years ago tomorrow I started recreating the NCAA DIII Volleyball Tournament brackets and today I finished them. I had found that there was very little information on the past tournaments other than the last few years and worse still, what we did have would occasionally get removed from the NCAA site. So using the Division III Women’s Volleyball Championships Record Book (2019), I started creating PDF files that showed the bracket as it was played starting in 1981. I just finished the 2014 update as the NCAA site still has the 2015 – 2019 brackets. (It should be noted that the 2015 bracket is starting to miss teams for some weird NCAA reason so I figure future work will be required by me.) I wish these didn’t have to be PDF files and could be some cool webpage with links but I’m old and this was the easiest path forward at the time. There is a link on the left-hand side (or pulldown for non-computer users) that will also access the files.

It was kind of cool to go through these matches and see the scores. The stories are probably lost, which is a shame, but I couldn’t help imagine the struggle on some of the epic 5-set matches I came across. So much time and effort by all of these teams wrapped up in a PDF seems inadequate. It was interesting to see the changes in the number of teams selected for the tournament and to see older powerhouse programs come and go through the years. You’ll notice the winning score has changed over the years but we’ve always had to win by 2. You’ll also see “Byes” in past years. They never seemed to win, those “Byes”.

What started as a summer project in 2019 is finally finished. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes along the way and I know that at least one of my source files made out like the third place match and no longer exists. If you are truly a volleyball nut then I hope you enjoy my efforts. To the rest, avoid and enjoy your sanity.