Women's Water Polo

CWPA Realigns for 2011; Conference Championship Expands to 12 Teams

Courtesy: Ed Hass, CWPA

BRIDGEPORT, PA - The Collegiate Water Polo Association will undergo a radical change for the 2011 women's season as the league's Division I-II varsity membership realigns from three divisions (North, South, West) to two (West, South) for one season creating a pair of six-team divisions.

Beginning this year, the NCAA will mandate that all conferences in which division play is contested meet a standard in which divisions with fewer than five teams must play double round-robin, while divisions with five or more teams can contest either single or double round-robin competition. By the new CWPA format, all 12 teams will advance to the CWPA Eastern Championship at Indiana University next spring.

This is a one year solution which will be reexamined in light of Notre Dame College (Ohio) joining the CWPA as a full-time member for the 2011-12 academic year.

By agreement, the two remaining divisions will be titled "Western" and "Southern" with each of the teams playing a single round-robin format in their divisions. The division alignment is as follows:

West
Bucknell University
Gannon University
Hartwick College
Indiana University
Mercyhurst College
University of Michigan

South
Brown University
George Washington University
Harvard University
Princeton University
Salem International University
University of Maryland

The 2011 CWPA Eastern Championship will be the first to feature all the Division I-II teams as the league membership voted to expand the championship to 12-teams beginning in 2011 during the league's annual meeting on June 7. The new regulation places four more teams into the championship field and will encompass the entirety of the CWPA's Division I and II institutions. The top four teams in the league will earn first-round byes with the remaining eight teams competing in the opening round.

In addition, in the event that one of the institutions is unable to field a team for the 2011 season, the league membership passed an 11-team CWPA Eastern Championship field model. Unlike the 12-team model, the 11-team format features the top five teams earning first round byes with the remaining six teams playing in the first round. The five top seeds and the winners of the play-in games advance to an eight team championship format. The bottom three teams (the losers of the play-in games) advance to a round-robin format amongst themselves to determine places 9, 10 and 11 in the field.

The league membership also voted to change the name of both the men's and women's Eastern Championship tournaments to the CWPA Eastern Championship to bring the league's penultimate championship in-line with the other varsity leagues'championship titles.