2011 Water Polo field announced

INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA Women’s Water Polo Committee has announced the teams that will participate in the 2011 National Collegiate Women’s Water Polo Championship.

The championship will be held May 13-15 at the Canham Natatorium, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The University of Michigan will serve as the host institution.

The 2011 National Collegiate Women’s Water Polo Championship will be an eight-team, single-elimination tournament with a losers’ bracket to determine places three through eight.

Automatic qualifiers were awarded to the Big West Conference (UC-Irvine), Collegiate Water Polo Association (Indiana), Mountain Pacific Sports Federation ( Cal) and the Western Water Polo Association (UC-San Diego). In addition, the conference representatives from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletics Conference (Redlands) and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (Iona College) will conduct a play-in game to determine the last automatic berth into the bracket. The following institutions received at-large bids to the championship field: UCLA; USC and Stanford.

The play-in game will be conducted May 7 at the Greenwich Family YMCA in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The No. 1 seed was awarded to Stanford (25-1) and the No. 2 seed was awarded to California (24-4). California will face No. 7 seed UC-San Diego (17-18) on May 13 in the first game of the championship at 3 p.m. The next game will feature No. 3 seed, UCLA (24-6) and No. 6 seed Indiana (25-11) at 4:30 p.m. Stanford will face the winner of the play-in game in the third game of the day at 6 p.m. The final contest of the night will pit No. 5 seed UC-Irvine (21-8) against No. 4 seed USC (18-6) at 7:30 p.m.