SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – For the first time in 52 years, the Union College field hockey team has earned a bid to the NCAA Division III Championship and will head to #17 Babson College for the first round of the national tournament on Wednesday, November 11. Game time is set for 3 p.m. in Babson Park. Mass.
With the tournament title, the field hockey team is the 13th Union program to reach the NCAA Tournament as a team and the 19th overall to participate in an NCAA Championship event. The team will be the first Union squad to make their NCAA Tournament debut since the men's lacrosse team in 2011 and the first women's team at Union to play in the NCAAs for the first time since women's basketball in 2004.
The Garnet Chargers earned one of 18 automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament and finished with a final NCAA Power Index (NPI) ranking of #25. The full NCAA Tournament bracket of 18 automatic qualifiers and 10 at-large bids is available
here.
Union will take on the Beavers for the ninth time in program history and the first time since 2021. Babson (15-6, 8-1 NEWMAC) earned the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference title by upsetting top-seeded Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the conference title game.
The winners of the 12 first-round games will advance to second- and third-round pods on November 14-15 at four sites, with the Union-Babson winner moving on to play #2 Middlebury College in Vermont in the second round. The semifinals and national championship game will be held on November 20 and 22 at William Smith College's McCooey Field in Geneva, N.Y.
A full preview of this weekend's action will be available this week on UnionAthletics.com.