New Selection Chair Named

I haven’t seen the February Championship Committee’s Report published, yet, but Haverford reported that their coach, Drew Hargrave, was elected Chair of the NCAA DIII Volleyball National Committee. This is the same thing as the Selection Committee. Drew will take over for Sam Atkinson who served in this role for the last two seasons. Drew was previously the Vice Chair so it made sense she would move on to this role. I am a little disappointed that my grass-root efforts for the nomination failed but I’m happy for Drew. Just another important position that I’ve been passed over for…again. When will people learn?

In all seriousness, I’m very happy for Drew who I got to meet at the championship this past season. She was very nice to me and it was fun talking to her while we dished on Sam. She had a lot of Sam jokes that were very funny. This committee has been in great hands for awhile now and I expect Drew to continue this trend. The big decision from this committee last year was to move to the NCAA Power Index (NPI) although I don’t know how much of that was pushed on them by the NCAA. It will be interesting to see from the February report how this committee viewed that decision. NPI does make this committee’s life a lot easier as the at-large selections are done for them. Their main tasks now are to put together the 64-team bracket and overseeing the championship events.

From a site perspective, Drew (like Sam before her) is a friend so if there are questions or issues that we spot, we can typically get a response that makes sense. Congratulations to Drew and thank you to Sam for his hard work. No word if Drew will be wearing bowties to keep Sam’s tradition alive.