HAVERFORD, Pa. - The No. 36 Haverford College women's tennis team (11-6, 6-2 CC) is featured in the latest release of the NCAA Division III's Region III rankings, the organization announced on Thursday. NCAA Regional Rankings are used as a key criteria to help determine the at-large field for the NCAA tournament, in addition to the fields for the singles and doubles championship draws.
The championships provide for a 44-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 36 conference champions, which form "Pool A." One "Pool B" bid is awarded to teams in conferences that do not award an AQ or independent institutions. The remaining seven teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference's AQ. The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.
Haverford is third in the Region III ranked-order release, behind the squads from No. 1 Swarthmore and No. 2 Johns Hopkins, who have each wrapped up top-two seeds in the CC tournament. The Fords will be the number three seed and advance directly to Centenial Conference semifinal action on Saturday. Directly below the Fords are the squads from conference foes Franklin & Marshall as well as Washington College. Stevens, Ursinus, Wilkes, Gettysburg, Dickinson and Misericordia round out the 11 teams represented in the rankings.
In singles, Abbey Russano checks in seventh in Region III while Rachael Fitzgerald is ranked eighth in the region. The doubles team of Ellie Esterowitz and Abbey Russano is ranked fifth in the region, while the squad of Fitzgerald and Anne Tobin checks in as "in consideration" by the committee.
The Fords wrap up the CC regular season at Gettysburg on Saturday at noon. Haverford will have a chance to add another regionally ranked win to the docket and then await the pairings for the Centennial Conference tournament next week. More information, including opponents, match locations, and times, will be finalized on Monday's conference calls.