NCAA DIII field hockey committee selects championship bracket

INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA Division III Field Hockey Committee announced today the field of 24 teams that will compete in the 2015 NCAA Division III Field Hockey Championship. Sixteen teams will compete in eight first-round games on campus sites Wednesday, November 11. The eight first-round winners, along with the eight teams that received a first-round bye, will compete at four campus sites during second/third-round play, Saturday and Sunday, November 14 and 15.

MORE: Interactive Division III field hockey bracket

The winners of the four sites will advance to the semifinals and final, Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22, at Turf Field on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Semifinals will be played at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, November 21, with the championship game being played at 1p.m. Eastern time, Sunday, November 22. Championship information, including information about tickets, is available at http://www.ncaa.com/sports/fieldhockey/d3.

Nineteen conferences have been awarded automatic qualification for their champions into the 2015 championship. One team was selected from Pool B, which consists of independent institutions and institutions that are members of conferences that do not meet the requirements for automatic qualification. Finally, four berths were reserved for Pool C, which consists of institutions from automatic-qualifying conferences that are not the conference champions and the remaining teams from Pool B.

The 19 conferences and schools receiving automatic qualification are:

Capital Athletic Conference: Salisbury

Centennial Conference: Ursinus

Colonial States Athletic Conference: Cabrini

Commonwealth Coast Conference: U. of New England

Empire 8: Stevens Institute

Great Northeast Athletic Conference: Simmons

Landmark: Catholic

Liberty League: William Smith

Little East Conference: Keene State                

Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth: Messiah

Middle Atlantic Conference Freedom: Misericordia

New England Collegiate Conference: Becker

New England Small College Athletic Conference: Bowdoin

New England Women’s and Men’s Athletics Conference: Mount Holyoke

New Jersey Athletic Conference: The College of New Jersey

North Atlantic Conference: Husson

North Coast Athletic Conference: DePauw

Old Dominion Athletic Conference: Bridgewater (Va.)

State University of New York Athletic Conference: New Paltz State

The one Pool B teams is: Rhodes College

The four Pool C teams are: Franklin & Marshall, Middlebury, Rochester (New York) and Wellesley