Pre-Championship Manual!

Today is like Christmas when you asked for that cool go-kart and, instead, received a Big Wheel.

The Pre-Championship Manual has been released, which is one of my favorite days of the year because it shows how the NCAA is going to (publicly) handle DIII volleyball’s championship. I’ve yet to see the manual on what they really do behind the scenes. Until then, we just have this little blog. I’ve updated the FAQ page with all of the new information.

One big note before I get to the smaller notes. The manual says that there will be 44 Pool A (automatic qualifiers). This is because Atlantic East now has an AQ. The manual also says there will be 2 Pool B bids, which is used for independent teams. There are only two independent teams in DIII so congratulations to Maranatha Baptist and Trinity (DC) for making the tournament!!!! There is a caveat in the manual on this so rest assure that there will be no Pool B bids this year because we lack enough independent teams to have one. That means there will be 20 Pool C (at-large) bids although currently it says only 18.

Some items of note as I go through the manual:

• Micaela Liddane is the new Assistant Director, Championships and Alliances.

• Linda Godby is the new Assistant Coordinator, Championships and Alliances.

• Danny Miller remains the Committee Chair for National Selection Committee (he’s the guy that never returns my emails).

• There are now 10 Regional Advisory Committees (RAC) (previously there were 8).

• The RAC chairs are from JWU (RI), Wellesley, Ithaca, Gallaudet, Carnegie Mellon, Averett, Saint Vincent, Edgewood, Bethel and Whittier.

• The Region X RAC consists of Chris Duarte-McDermott (chair), Julie Jenkins, Nicole McCoy-Dalby, Kellee Roesel and Leslie Shevlin.

• The Regional Rankings will be published October 20, October 27 and November 3. Final published rankings will be November 8.

• Tournament selection is November 7th.

• Selection show is November 8th at 12:30 pm Eastern.

• Selection criteria is unchanged.

One other big note is that unlike the UAA, which has their spread out schools in regions reflective of where they are located, the C2C, which includes Mills College and UC Santa Cruz are included in Region VI (formally the South Region). This makes no sense. I reached out to someone that is familiar with this and they responded that they are still in the process of trying to figure that out. They believe there has been a lot of turnover and that has led (my words now) to a mistake.

There you have it. Without the Pool B and C2C mistake, this would be more like a go-Kart to me. We’ll see if the parents will return the Big Wheel and make this right.