Undefeated Wartburg Volleyball Will Host NCAA Regional Tournament

Wartburg College’s historic undefeated season (27-0) will continue later this week at their homecourt of Levick Arena after securing an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament by winning the American Rivers Conference Tournament. In the championship match on Saturday, the 4th-ranked Knights trailed the Kohawks of Coe College two sets to zero before charging back to win the next three sets.

The Knights are just one of two teams of the 437 volleyball programs in Division III that are undefeated. (Johns Hopkins)

The Knights will be one of eight locations hosting the first three rounds of regional action in the 64-team national tournament. This will be the first time the Knights have hosted a volleyball regional at Levick Arena. This will mark the 12^th NCAA tournament appearance for Wartburg College (1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2021).

In 2017, the Knights defeated St. Thomas in the First Round and then lost in four sets to Gustavus Adolphus. In their previous 11 appearances, the Knights are 7-11.

If Wartburg advances out of the single-elimination regional bracket, they will travel to St. Louis, Missouri for the championship rounds.

The other seven schools that will travel to Wartburg for the first three rounds include Ohio Northern, Colorado College, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Bethel (Minnesota), #3 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (California), and Aurora (Illinois).

Six of the eight schools in the Wartburg Regional are ranked in the Top 25.

View the Schedule for this Weekend at Wartburg College in Waverly.

Friday:

12:30 PM – #22 UW-Stevens Point Pointers (26-7) vs. #21 Bethel Royals (22-6)
3 PM - #3 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athenas (27-1) vs. Aurora Spartans (20-8)
5:30 PM – #16 Ohio Northern Polar Bears (22-5) vs. #11 Colorado College (29-5)
8 PM – #4 Wartburg (27-0) vs. Cornell College Rams (20-11)

ROUND 2 will continue on Saturday with matches at 2:30 and 5 PM and the regional championship will be held Sunday afternoon at 2:00.

Many of the eight teams participating in the regional bracket in Waverly this weekend have already played each other earlier in the season:

The Knights defeated Bethel University 3-1 in October.

Claremont-M-S beat Ohio Northern 3-0 in October.

Colorado College shut out Cornell College 3-0 also in October.

This will be the third time this season that UW-Stevens Point will face Bethel. The Pointers lost to Bethel 3-0 during the season’s opening weekend in September and then defeated the Royals 3-1 three weeks later.

The 2020 tournament was canceled due to Covid-19. Johns Hopkins University went undefeated in 2019 (35-0) to capture the National Championship which was held in Cedar Rapids.