Springfield, Mass. -- May 22, 2009 -- With four more NCAA Championships completed and added to the point totals, Springfield College has risen to 22nd nationally (of 422) in the NACDA Learfield Sports Directors' Cup Division III standings. The Pride's athletic program had been ranked 25th through the winter standings. One more update, the final update, will be released later in mid-June.Springfield now has a total of 419 points by virtue of the 64 points the softball team added this spring. Those were unexpected points as SC had entered the NEWMAC Tourney seeded fourth with an overall record at the time of 15-21. Not only did Springfield win that tourney to nab the automatic qualifying berth for the NCAA Tournament, Kathy Mangano's club went on to win three more games to advance well into the New England Regional at Endicott College. By the time SC was eliminated from the 8-team regional, the 7th-seeded Pride was one of only three teams left standing.
Overall, Springfield is ranked fifth among New England's colleges and universities from Division III. In fact, the top three schools are all from New England. They are Amherst with 730 points, Middlebury with 698, and Williams with 673.50. In the 11th spot is Tufts with 561.50 points.
Springfield is ranked first among schools in the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference. Other NEWMAC schools listed include MIT (26th with 365.63 points), followed by Babson (107th with 128), Wheaton (Mass.) (T118th with 118), Wellesley (T121st with 115), Coast Guard (162nd with 81), Clark (Mass.) (204th with 56), WPI (T212th with 50), and Smith (283rd with 23.50).
At this stage, Springfield will be expecting more points from three more NCAA Championships that are yet to be completed. Those sports are men's lacrosse, men's track & field, and women's track & field. All three of those sports' championships will be completed during the Memorial Day weekend.
