A Brief History of Regions in DIII Wrestling – d3wrestle.com

Prior to 2013, qualifying for the NCAA DIII Wrestling Championships was held at the conference level. Each qualifying tournament was assigned a number of qualifiers based on a formula that took into account the size of the event (teams and wrestlers) and the performance of that tournament’s qualifiers in the most recent NCAA tournaments. For events with 11-20 qualifiers, the winner of each weight automatically qualified and the coaches selected the others. Events with 21-30 qualifiers automatically took the top two, and events with 31 or more automatically took the top three. Wildcard selections could come from any weight, so each weight in the NCAA tournament could have a different number of entries.

Two years prior to 2013, the number of qualifiers was increased from 160 to 170. The qualifying system and wildcard selections remained as usual, but the final 10 entries were chosen using a formula that ensured that each weight had at least 16 wrestlers and that some historical performance data was included.

For the 2013 season, the regional system was implemented for the first time. There were six regions (Northeast, East, Mideast, Midwest, Central, and West) and the top three wrestlers in each weight qualified for the championships. There were no wild cards. There was also no mechanism to keep the number of teams in each region roughly equal. In the last year of this series of regions, the West region had 11 teams, while three other regions had 19 teams each. Each still qualified the top three. The West region also looked like this:

The NCAA Division III Wrestling Committee attempted to fix this for the 2017 season, but their request was denied. You can read more about what happened here and here . However, the regions did change for the 2018 season, and those regions were used (with minor adjustments as teams were added) from 2018-2024. One key aspect of the new regions was a requirement that the size of each region be within three teams of every other region. Conferences could also request that all teams from that conference be placed in the same region.

For the 2025 season, the number of qualifying games has been increased from 180 to 210 and a seventh region has been added. This is a welcome change, as there will be 126 teams this season and more in 2026. The requirement to keep conferences together has been removed, along with the requirement to keep region sizes within three teams. The proposed regionalization recently sent to coaches already has one region with 20 teams and another with 15. This proposal is not final, as it must be approved by the NCAA Management Council later this month and the Presidents Council in early August. The Division III Championships Committee has accepted the regional proposal and supports granting an exception to NCAA Bylaw 31.3.4.3:

31.3.4.3 Regional coordination. All members of a conference shall be placed in the same region for evaluation purposes unless an exception is granted by the Championships Committee. Members of those conferences that are granted an exception shall be placed in their natural geographic regions for evaluation purposes.

Check out the map above for a general idea of ​​what the regions might look like, but keep in mind that these aren’t final. There will be seven regions this winter, but they may not look like what you see above.