The NCAA Womens Volleyball Championship How Do Teams Qualify For It? 

The NCAA Womens volleyball championship - how do teams qualify for it, who qualifies for a bid, what's a bracket and how many rounds are there before the final? 

Hmmm, just an observation. 64 teams in this 2024 NCAA womens volleyball championship and only three black girls (two setters) are on the representative poster?

#representationmatters

I love NCAA womens volleyball championship time.

Its because the strongest teams get to prove themselves at this time of year, and you really get to see top collegiate athletes in their best athletic form making incredible plays repeatedly while relying on mental toughness and total trust in their teammates to accomplish their end-of-the season team goals. 

My University of Tennessee Knoxville team made four NCAA tournament appearance in all four years of attendance and to this day I remember the elevated level of excitement, and "grinta" as they say in Italian and the increased team and individual heightened motivation to get past the first two rounds of the tournament and to see how far your team can advance through each round.  

Why? Because getting to this point is a huge deal and earning an automatic berth, or qualifying as a wild card entry being "invited to the Dance" is like getting an exclusive invitation to a Puff Daddy party. Extremely exclusive and very hard to get in.

It's at this point of the year that the saying "the cream rises to the top" really comes to life. 

Because the strongest players and teams rise to the occasion. If your collegiate team doesn't make it into the NCAA tournament then your regular collegiate season is over and done. 

But the more you win, the longer your tournament season is and in each game your opponent is just as good as your team and teammates or its much better.

So that requires players to dig deep emotionally, physically and mentally for longer periods of time. 

After four months of regular season from August through September, and then conference playoffs tournaments in October and the beginning of November ...then by the end of November, the real show, the NCAA Womens Volleyball Championship begins. 

Let's get started.

I decided to flip the script a little bit and start with the "What" so this all makes sense from the beginning. 

The NCAA Womens volleyball tournament is sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association and  is the last national tournament of the year for all the teams in DI, DII and DIII (there are 3 different championship tournaments for each division) that qualify to be in it.

The tournament is held the first two weeks in December before most schools, colleges and universities let out for Christmas vacation.

As I mentioned earlier, there are Division II and Division III NCAA Womens Volleyball championships, but in this case I'm going to be talking about the top of the top collegiate players which is the Division I NCAA Womens Volleyball championship tournament.

Here's how it works. 

The NCAA Womens Volleyball playoff tournament has a single elimination format this is also called "one and done" which means that when the tournament begins, if your team loses, your team is out and your collegiate season is officially over for the year. 

If your team wins then they continue to advance to the next round in the tournament. So, yes, the pressure is on in each match to keep your college season alive for as long as possible. 

Only 64 teams are allowed in the NCAA womens volleyball championship which hosts five rounds of competition.

First and Second Round matches are hosted at the campus sites of the Top 16 seeds in the tournament:

No. 1 Seed Hosts: Pittsburgh, Nebraska, Penn State, Louisville

No. 2 Seed Hosts: Stanford, Wisconsin, Creighton, SMU

No. 3 Seed Hosts: Kentucky, Texas, Kansas, Arizona State

No. 4 Seed Hosts: Purdue, Baylor, Utah, Oregon

32 of the 64 teams are automatically included in the tournament because they earned the right, by finishing first in their season ending conference championships. 

There are 33 collegiate conference members in the NCAA all across the US each with championship tournaments held at the end of their regular conference seasons which end in November.

By Thanksgiving weekend, the first place conference championship winners are declared because they won their conference championship. 

So if your team is a conference champion first place winner, then you and your teammates know you all qualified for an automatic berth into the NCAA volleyball tournament championship playoffs.  

The last weekend of the Thanksgiving holiday, is when we usually learn the complete list of the conference champions.

How are the other 32 teams chosen that make up the 64 team field? 

Every year usually during Thanksgiving weekend there's a NCAA volleyball selection show on ESPN. 

During that show the announcements are made about

• how teams are seeded and ranked in the tournament
• which teams are hosting the regionals which are what the third and fourth rounds of the NCAA volleyball tournament are called
• which teams will have to travel to play
• and in which bracket are each of the teams

Every year teams gather together at homes, local eateries and even gyms to watch the televised announcements in hopes that their team "wins a bid" in other words there team is selected to go to the "dance":...which what the NCAA volleyball tournament is called "the dance."

Click to take a look at how some teams around the country reacted to watching the NCAA volleyball selection show last week. 

These teams are chosen, some times controversially by a committee that considers each team's

• season ending national ranking 
• season ending win-loss record 
• opponent strength 
• strength of the team's playing schedule 

So if during the your team's season you played and beat tough teams then that would count much more than playing against and beating easy teams. 

Based on all this info they "seed" the tournament brackets, which means they place each team in a spot according to who they have figured out should be ranked or seeded first, second, third all the way to the 64th team in the country.

Their selections are kept secret until they announce everything live on TV during the NCAA Volleyball Selection show. 

The latest thing now since the popularity of women's volleyball is growing so fast is for news announcers and well known journalist to make pre-season and pre-NCAA womens volleyball champion tournament predictions.  

Thank you for visiting this page. I'd love to know which teams are your personal favorites and who you'll be rooting for when the tournament starts. 

Be sure to leave me a comment in the box below to let me know your thoughts. 

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