DUDLEY, Mass. (May 9) – The Nichols College women's tennis team has been selected to the 2011 NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championships, it was announced Monday afternoon. In their first-ever trip to the NCAA tournament, the Bison will face Wheaton (Mass.) in the first round at defending national team champion Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, May 13.

The winner of Friday's match between Nichols (21-1) and Wheaton (18-1) will face the host Ephs (17-3) in the second round at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, May 14. Other teams at the Williams site include The College of New Jersey (14-2), Bridgewater State (14-1) and Bowdoin (12-6).

Nichols earned an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament with its first-ever The Commonwealth Coast Conference title, won on October 23, 2010 on the Bison's home court. Nichols has set single-season team records for wins in a season (21) and win percentage (.955) in this year's historic campaign.

First year Anna Dyakiv (Amsterdam, N.Y.) set the program's single-season singles wins record with a 21-0 ledger at the top singles spot, while taking home the TCCC Player and Rookie of the Year awards. She and senior Maria Balabanova (Moscow, Russia) won 19 doubles matches to set a new single-season record. Meanwhile, Balabanova went 19-0 on the singles side to break the program's career singles wins record (52) to go hand-in-hand with her career doubles victories record of 45. Megan Woodruff (Morris, Conn.) also enters the tournament on a singles streak, winning the last 12 of her 17-1 record on the year between fourth, fifth and sixth singles.

Nichols won 10 matches without surrendering a point this season, including 5-0 sweeps in all three TCCC playoff matches. The Bison's only loss on the year came on September 22, 2010, a 6-3 home loss to Wesleyan University. Nichols has gone on to win 14-straight matches since then, including five this spring by a combined score of 33-9.

The NCAA tournament is a single-elimination tournament with the first, second and third rounds played at regional sites, May 13-15 or May 12-14. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges will host the team championships finals, which will be held May 24-26 at the Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont, California. Student-athletes selected to the individual championships will be announced Wednesday, May 11.

The championship provides for a 49-team tournament. Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 37 conference champions, which form "Pool A." Three teams are selected from true independents and schools from conferences that do not have an automatic bid for their champions (Pool B). The remaining nine teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference's AQ and the remaining Pool B institutions (Pool C). The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.


NCAA Bracket

Full NCAA Release

Directions to Williams College