INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA Division III Softball Committee has announced the 62 teams that will compete in the Division III Softball Championship.
The regional round will be held May 8-10. Four teams will compete at 14 regional sites and three teams will compete at two regional sites. The team advancing from each regional will compete in the super regional round May 15 and 16. The finals, hosted by the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and the City of Salem, will be held May 21-26 at Moyer Sports Complex in Salem, Virginia. All rounds will use a double-elimination format.
Forty-two conferences received automatic qualification (Pool A). Two institutions were selected from Pool B, which includes independent institutions and institutions from conferences that do not meet the automatic qualification criteria. The 18 remaining teams were selected on an at-large basis from automatic qualifying conferences and the remaining institutions in Pool B.
In 2014, Tufts defeated Salisbury twice in the championship series to win its second consecutive NCAA softball championship.
The conferences and teams that received automatic qualification were:
Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference - Penn State-Behrend
American Southwest Conference - Texas-Tyler
Capital Athletic Conference - Christopher Newport
Centennial Conference - McDaniel
City University of New York Athletic Conference - Staten Island
College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin - Illinois Wesleyan
Colonial States Athletic Conference - Neumann
Commonwealth Coast Conference - Western New England
Commonwealth Conference - Lebanon Valley
Empire 8 - Alfred
Freedom Conference - DeSales
Great Northeast Athletic Conference - Johnson & Wales (Rhode Island)
Great South Athletic Conference - Salem
Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference - Anderson (Indiana)
Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - Central (Iowa)
Landmark Conference - Moravian
Liberty League - Rochester
Little East Conference - Eastern Connecticut State
Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts|
Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association - Trine
Midwest Conference - Lake Forest
Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - Gustavus Adolphus
New England Collegiate Conference - Elms
New England Small College Athletic Conference - Tufts
New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference - Wellesley
New Jersey Athletic Conference - Ramapo
North Atlantic Conference - Husson
North Coast Athletic Conference - DePauw
North Eastern Athletic Conference - Penn State-Berks
Northern Athletics Conference - Aurora
Northwest Conference - Linfield
Ohio Athletic Conference - Heidelberg
Old Dominion Athletic Conference - Randolph-Macon
Presidents' Athletic Conference - Thomas More
Skyline Conference - Farmingdale State
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - Whittier
Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference - Texas Lutheran
St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - Fontbonne
State University of New York Athletic Conference - SUNY Cortland
Upper Midwest Athletic Conference - St. Scholastica
USA South Athletic Conference - LaGrange
Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - Wisconsin-Whitewater
The institutions selected from Pool B were:
Berry
Emory
The 18 institutions selected from Pool C were:
Alma
Averett
East Texas Baptist
Hope
Kean
Luther
MIT
North Central (Illinois)
Rowan
St. Thomas (Minnesota)
Salisbury
Simpson
Virginia Wesleyan
Washington U. in St. Louis
Wheaton (Massachusetts)
William Paterson
Williams
WPI
REGIONAL SITES (16):
Alfred, New York - Alfred, host
Atlanta, Georgia - Emory, host
Bloomington, Illinois - Illinois Wesleyan, host
Cortland, New York - SUNY Cortland, host
Decorah, Iowa - Luther, host
Greencastle, Indiana - DePauw, host
Lake Forest, Illinois - Lake Forest, host
Medford, Massachusetts - Tufts, host
Newport News, Virginia - Christopher Newport, host
Norton, Massachusetts - Wheaton (MA), host
Pella, Iowa - Central (Iowa), host
Rochester, New York - Rochester, host
Salisbury, Maryland - Salisbury, host
Union, New Jersey - Kean, host
Tyler, Texas - Texas-Tyler, host
Williamstown, Massachusetts - Williams, host