INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA Division III Field Hockey Committee announced today the field of 24 teams that will compete in the 2018 NCAA Division III Field Hockey Championship.
Saint Joseph's College (19-1, 7-0 GNAC) will play at Endicott College (17-4, 12-0 CCC) in an opening-round game on Wednesday at 6:00 PM. Both the Monks and Gulls earned an automatic qualifier after clinching conference titles over the weekend, when St. Joe's toppled Lasell College, 4-0, in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Championship on Sunday and Endicott edged University of New England, 1-0, in the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) Championship on Saturday.
Wednesday's winner will travel to Pennsylvania to face Messiah College, the top-ranked team in the country in the most recent National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA) Poll, at 11:00 AM on Saturday.
Sixteen teams will compete in eight first-round games on campus sites Wednesday, Nov. 7. 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 10 and 11. INTERACTIVE BRACKET
The winners of the four sites will advance to the semifinals and final, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 17 and 18, at Spooky Nook Sports Complex in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Semifinals will be played at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, Nov. 17, with the championship game being played at 1 p.m. Eastern time, Sunday, Nov. 18. Championship information, including information about tickets, is available here.
Seventeen conferences have been awarded automatic qualification for their champions into the 2018 championship. Two teams were 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 17 conferences and schools receiving automatic qualification are:
| Capital Athletic Conference | Salisbury |
| Centennial Conference | Johns Hopkins |
| Colonial States Athletic Conference | Keystone |
| Commonwealth Coast Conference | Endicott |
| Empire 8 | Washington and Jefferson |
| Great Northeast Athletic Conference | Saint Joesph's (Maine) |
| Landmark | Susquehanna |
| Liberty League | Vassar |
| Little East Conference | Keene State |
| Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth | Messiah |
| Middle Atlantic Conference Freedom | Fairleigh Dickinson, Florham |
| New England Small College Athletic Conference | Middlebury |
| New England Women's and Men's Athletics Conference | Smith |
| New Jersey Athletic Conference | Rowan |
| North Coast Athletic Conference | Denison |
| Old Dominion Athletic Conference | Lynchburg |
| State University of New York Athletic Conference | SUNY New Paltz |
The Pool B teams are:
Gwynedd Mercy, Rhodes College
The five Pool C teams are:
Franklin & Marshall, Montclair State, Rochester (New York), TCNJ, Tufts
The dates, sites and pairings are listed on the complete championship bracket, which is attached. For more information about the championship, log on to www.ncaa.com.
In 2017, Middlebury College defeated the defending champions, Messiah College 4-0 at Trager Stadium at the University of Louisville. It was Middlebury's third national title.
