INDIANAPOLIS-- The NCAA Division III Field Hockey Committee announced on Sunday the field of 24 teams that will compete in the 2016 NCAA Division III Field Hockey Championship.
Sixteen teams will compete in eight first-round games on campus sites Wednesday, Nov. 9. 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, Nov. 12 and 13.
The winners of the four sites will advance to the semifinals and final, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 19 and 20, at McCooey Field on the campus of William Smith College in Geneva, New York. Semifinals will be played at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, November 19, with the championship game being played at 1 p.m. Eastern time, Sunday, Nov. 20. Championship information, including information about tickets, is available at here.
RELATED: 2016 bracket
Eighteen conferences have been awarded automatic qualification for their champions into the 2016 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, five 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 18 conferences and schools receiving automatic qualification are:
| CONFERENCE | SCHOOL |
|---|---|
| Capital Athletic | Salisbury |
| Centennial | Ursinus |
| Colonial States Athletic | Cabrini College |
| Commonwealth Coast | New England |
| Empire 8 | St. John Fisher |
| Great Northeast Athletic | St. Joseph's (Maine) |
| Landmark | Elizabethtown |
| Liberty League | Skidmore |
| Little East | Keene State |
| Middle Atlantic Commonwealth | Messiah |
| Middle Atlantic Freedom | King's (Pennsylvania) |
| New England Small College Athletic | Tufts |
| New England Women's and Men's Athletics | Babson |
| New Jersey Athletic | The College of New Jersey |
| North Atlantic | Maine, Farmington |
| North Coast Athletic | Kenyon |
| Old Dominion Athletic | Shenandoah |
| State University of New York Athletic | State University of New York at Geneseo |
The one Pool B team is:
- Rhodes College
The five Pool C teams are:
- Franklin & Marshall College
- Middlebury College
- Montclair State University
- University of Rochester
- Trinity College (Connecticut)
The dates, sites and pairings are listed on the complete championship bracket. For more information about the championship, log on to www.ncaa.com.
In 2015, Middlebury College avenged two regular-season losses by defeating Bowdoin College 1-0 at Turf Field at Washington and Lee University. It was Middleburyâs second national title, the last one occurring in 1998.
