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 13-15. 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 20 and 21. The finals, hosted by the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and the City of Salem, will be held May 26-31 at Moyer Sports Complex in Salem, Virginia. All rounds will use a double-elimination format.
Forty-three conferences received automatic qualification (Pool A). One institution was 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.
The conferences and teams that received automatic qualification were:
| Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference | Penn State-Behrend |
| American Southwest Conference | East Texas Baptist |
| Capital Athletic Conference | Salisbury |
| Centennial Conference | Haverford |
| City University of New York Athletic Conference | Staten Island |
| Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin | Wheaton (Illinois) |
| Colonial States Athletic Conference | Neumann |
| Commonwealth Coast Conference | Salve Regina |
| Empire 8 | Ithaca |
| Great Northeast Athletic Conference | Johnson & Wales (Rhode Island) |
| Great South Athletic Conference | Agnes Scott |
| Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference | Hanover |
| Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | Luther |
| Landmark Conference | Moravian |
| Liberty League | Rochester |
| Little East Conference | Western Connecticut State |
| Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference | Worcester State |
| Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association | Alma |
| Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth | Messiah |
| Middle Atlantic Conference Freedom | Manhattanville |
| Midwest Conference | Lake Forest |
| Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | St. Thomas (Minnesota) |
| New England Collegiate Conference | Becker |
| New England Small College Athletic Conference | Williams |
| New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference | WPI |
| New Jersey Athletic Conference | Rowan |
| North Atlantic Conference | Castleton |
| North Coast Athletic Conference | Wittenberg |
| North Eastern Athletic Conference | Keuka |
| Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference | Benedictine (Illinois) |
| Northwest Conference | Linfield |
| Ohio Athletic Conference | Heidelberg |
| Old Dominion Athletic Conference | Virginia Wesleyan |
| Presidents' Athletic Conference | St. Vincent |
| Skyline Conference | Mount Saint Mary (New York) |
| Southern Athletic Association | Berry |
| Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | Claremont-Mudd-Scripps |
| St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | Greenville |
| Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference | Texas Lutheran |
| State University of New York Athletic Conference | SUNY Cortland |
| Upper Midwest Athletic Conference | Wisconsin-Superior |
| USA South Athletic Conference | Ferrum |
| Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | Wisconsin-Whitewater |
The institution selected from Pool B was: Emory
The 18 institutions selected from Pool C were:
Aurora
Birmingham-Southern
Chicago
Christopher Newport
DePauw
George Fox
Illinois Wesleyan
MIT
Piedmont
St. Catherine
St. John Fisher
Simpson
Texas-Tyler
The College of New Jersey
Trine
Tufts
Washington U. in St. Louis
Whitworth
REGIONAL SITES AND HOST INSTITUTIONS (16):
Alma, Michigan - Alma
*Angola, Indiana - Trine
Bloomington, Illinois - Illinois Wesleyan
Cortland, New York - SUNY Cortland
Decorah, Iowa - Luther
Ewing, New Jersey - The College of New Jersey
Ithaca, New York - Ithaca
Lake Forest, Illinois - Lake Forest
Medford, Massachusetts - Tufts
Mount Berry, Georgia - Berry
Newport News, Virginia - Christopher Newport
Norfolk, Virginia - Virginia Wesleyan
Rochester, New York - St. John Fisher
Spokane, Washington - Whitworth
Tyler, Texas - Texas-Tyler
Williamstown, Massachusetts - Williams
* The regional site at Angola, Indiana, will be conducted Thursday-Saturday, May 12-14.
In 2015, Tufts defeated Texas-Tyler twice in the championship series to win its third consecutive NCAA softball championship. Tufts finished the season with a 51-0 record.