NAPERVILLE, Ill. – For the second-straight season, Augustana will host the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) Women’s Tennis Automatic Qualifier Tournament this Friday and Saturday.
Semifinal matches for this 11th annual event will take place on Friday as No. 4 seed Carroll faces No. 1 seed Augustana at 12 p.m., followed by No. 3 seed Carthage taking on No. 2 seed Wheaton at 3 p.m. Friday’s winners will play in the championship match at 11 a.m. on Saturday, with the winner earning the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Women’s Tennis Championship.
All matches will be played at Augustana College’s tennis courts located at 3500 5th Avenue in Rock Island, Illinois. In the event of bad weather, matches will be moved indoors to the Quad City Tennis Club, located at 1522 47th Avenue in Moline, Illinois.
The CCIW began conducting an automatic qualifier event in the spring of 2007 to determine its representative to the NCAA postseason.
The four teams advanced to this weekend’s tournament by placing in the top four at the CCIW’s fall championship in October as Augustana earned hosting duties with a first place finish.
Wheaton enters the weekend as the defending champion as the 2016 title was the Thunder’s eighth in program history. Augustana won this event in 2015, while Carthage won the first-ever AQ tournament in 2007.
The NCAA will announce the full field of participants to the national tournament on Monday, May 8.
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The College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) was founded in 1946 and currently services nine member institutions including Augustana College (Rock Island, IL), Carroll University (Waukesha, WI), Carthage College (Kenosha, WI), Elmhurst College (Elmhurst, IL), Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington, IL), Millikin University (Decatur, IL), North Central College (Naperville, IL), North Park University (Chicago, IL) and Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL). During the 2015-16 academic year, the CCIW honored over 1,600 academic all-conference recipients, 14 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, 36 CoSIDA Academic All-District recipients and over 100 all-Americans.