As the softball team prepares for its final game against Harvard University this afternoon, some are lamenting the conference’s structure. Though Dartmouth and Harvard are the best two Ivy League teams this season, only one will move on to the Ivy championship.
“It’s the cards that we were dealt,” softball head coach Rachel Hanson said. “It is how it is, so we’re going to compete within that structure. My hope is that at some point we can change that structure a little bit.”
For most spring sports teams in the Ancient Eight, the regular season has ended and teams are looking forward to postseason play, whether it be an Ivy League Tournament or the NCAA Tournament.
But not all postseason play is created equal. Some sports have no Ivy League tournament, allowing the winner of the regular season title to automatically advance to the NCAA Tournament. Others play a conference tournament for the right to move on.
Ivy League softball and baseball coaches regularly approach the Ivy League about creating a four-team tournament, Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said, but the main obstacle to doing so is scheduling.
“Frankly, this year we’re having challenges just getting our regular season games in because of rain outs we’ve had,” Harris said. Organizing a four-team championship would lengthen the current schedule, she said.
No formal proposal to change baseball or softball conference structure has made it through the athletic directors since 2009, when Harris started in her role, she said.
“I can understand where they’re coming from,” Harris said. The current schedule does not permit the teams to play each other home and away the same number of times, she said.
Both baseball and softball maintain the same playoff system. The eight teams in the Ivy League are separated into two divisions of four, and the division winners, determined by conference record, play in a best-of-three series.
A tournament series comprising the top four teams with the best overall conference records, not the top two from both divisions, would make for a better experience, Hanson said.
By splitting teams up into divisional play, schools can play at least three conference opponents home and away before the division champions play for the Ivy bid to the NCAA tournament, Harris said.
The closest example of how a baseball or softball tournament could work might be women’s lacrosse, where four teams with the best conference records advance to the Ivy League tournament for the chance to win the league’s automatic bid. With no division separation, an elaborate tiebreaker system helps determine seeding.
This system, however, has only existed since 2010. Previously, like soccer and basketball, the regular season title winner advanced to the NCAA tournament.
Since lacrosse teams play each other only once a year, the schedule is not as balanced as it is in basketball, Harris said.
Women’s lacrosse head coach Amy Patton said she believes the new tournament system is better than its predecessor.
The tournament resembles an NCAA final four tournament because it mimics the playoff system with games on Friday and Sunday, she said.
“There’s a lot of pressure and it’s really competitive, and any of the four teams can win,” Patton said. “I think it really prepares the Ivy athletes for the NCAAs, and I think it helps us get more teams into the NCAAs.”
Ivy women’s lacrosse tends to send multiple teams to the NCAA tournament.
Even if the Ivy tournament’s No. 1 seed doesn’t win the tournament title, that team is still likely to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on its record, Harris said.
In 2011, Princeton was the No. 4 seed in the Ivy tournament and went on to win the tournament, which was the Tigers only way of getting into the NCAA tournament. Both the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth also advanced to the NCAA tournament that year.
The tournament provides the Ivy League a chance to preserve its national prominence in lacrosse, prepare teams for the NCAA tournament and give athletes additional experience, Patton said.
Expanding the Ivy League tournament to include six or even all eight teams would be inadvisable and logistically difficult, Patton said. There would be high costs and it could diminish the quality of the tournament as well as the top four seeds, Patton said.
For Ivy League football, no games follow the regular season’s final whistle.
Last fall’s season ended with mild controversy as Princeton and Harvard finished the regular season with the same conference record. Though Princeton beat Harvard, a regular season finale upset by Dartmouth meant that Princeton shared the title.
No structure exists — whether tiebreaker rules or a conference championship game — that would have allowed Princeton to legitimately claim the Ivy League title for itself.
NCAA football rules prohibit conferences with fewer than 12 teams from playing a championship game. The Ivy League has eight.
Though the Ivy League holds an automatic bid for the Division I Football Championship Series playoff tournament, it turns it down every year because of a longstanding decision made by the Ivy League presidents upon the league’s inception in 1954 that football teams focus on Ivy competition, Harris said.
Another concern is that FCS playoffs usually occur in December and the first week of January, when most Ivies hold exams.
While the NCAA basketball March Madness tournament also spans a month, there are fewer academic concerns because most Ivy League schools besides Dartmouth do not have exams in March, Harris said.
University presidents approve League championships but the athletic directors must determine whether sports have championship games or not.
Harris said Ivy athletic directors have discussed having an Ivy basketball tournament, but most believe the current arrangement is the best way to determine who to send to the NCAA tournament, particularly in a sport where the Ivy League does not typically receive multiple bids.
Because every team plays home-and-home matchups against the other teams in the Ancient Eight, the better teams tend to separate themselves, Harris said.
“It’s a very equal schedule,” Harris said. “It’s a grueling schedule.”
Without a conference tournament, teams sometimes miss out on postseason play due to injuries, men’s basketball head coach Paul Cormier said.
Cormier, who has also coached at Villanova University and Fairfield University, said he has witnessed the excitement that accompanies championship week, when all Division I basketball conferences, besides the Ivy League, play to compete in the NCAA tournament.
“So many players miss out on having a true tournament experience during their college years,” Cormier said.
Many Ivy coaches agree, he said, that the League should create its own championship tournament.
Soccer, like basketball, awards NCAA bids to the team that wins the regular season title.
“I think it makes for a very competitive season and it creates a lot of excitement for every game, especially early season games,” men’s soccer head coach Chad Riley said. “I like that the team that wins the League and has been the most consistent over the last month of the season goes on to represent the League in the NCAA tournament.”
The difficulty with having a soccer tournament is deciding how many teams to include, said Riley, who has experience with conference tournaments from his time at the University of Notre Dame.
The key difference between men’s soccer and basketball, however, is that historically at least two Ivy teams earn spots in the 48-team NCAA soccer tournament while Ivy basketball usually receives only its one automatic bid. In 2010, four men’s Ivy soccer teams went to the NCAA tournament, and three earned bids in 2009.
The historic strength of Ivy soccer means that there’s a decreased likelihood of the conference’s second-best team missing a chance at the national title, limiting frustration, Riley said.
“We don’t really need a tournament to improve our numbers,” Riley said. “But I think it’s something always worth evaluating.”
