On April 26, 2008, the men’s lacrosse team ended its regular season with a 14-10 win at Bates that clinched second place in the standings. The Cardinals then had to return home for a 1:00 first-round NESCAC Championship game against seventh-seeded Trinity the following day, which ended its season at Connecticut College. After a series of negotiations, the starting time was pushed back to 2:00 to allow the team additional time to rest following the 260-mile trip. Many members of the team, however, still expressed displeasure at the tight schedule and limited time to rest.

Experiences such as these are now a thing of the past. The NESCAC has instituted a series of scheduling changes for the 2008-09 season, including a rearranging of each team’s conference schedule and the move of the season finale from Saturday to Friday. The conference also altered the post season Championships of the Men’s and Women’s Soccer, Field Hockey, Women’s Ice Hockey, and Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse teams. Since their inception in the 2000-01 school year, the top seven teams in the regular-season standings had qualified for these Championships, with the regular-season champion receiving a first-round bye. They have now been expanded, however, to include the top eight teams, and the first-round bye for the regular-season champion has been eliminated (this is the format currently used by volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball, and men’s ice hockey).

“The decision to change [the Championships] essentially started in the spring of 2007,” explained NESCAC Executive Director Andrea Savage. “The administrators take a periodic review…of the structure of the format to ensure that we’re providing the best possible experience for the student-athletes. We’re really looking at the opportunity to make the Championships as inclusive as possible while also keeping missed class time at a minimum and maintaining the integrity of the regular season.”

The NESCAC currently sponsors championship events in 23 sports. Every NESCAC-recognized sport is sponsored by at least ten schools, with the exception of women’s ice hockey, which is sponsored by nine.

“Certainly, that issue was discussed in talking about whether to have seven or eight teams in the Championship,” explained Savage. “With seven teams, and the women’s Championship going over two weekends and the top team receiving a bye, that was not only seen as a significant advantage for the top seed, but at the same time seen as a significant disadvantage because that team had no competition for two weeks during the most important part of the season.”

Of the remaining NESCAC sports that did not restructure their playoffs, both Baseball and Softball are split into two divisions with the top two teams in each division advancing. Six teams currently qualify for the Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships. According to Savage, however, scheduling concerns make it unlikely that the fields for these Championships will be expanded. While the expansion from seven to eight teams simply requires the addition of a fourth quarterfinal game on the first day of Championship play, expanding these Championships would necessitate adding one or more days to the schedule.

“Expanding the Baseball and Softball Championships would lead to either an additional weekend or midweek game,” said Savage, “and we don’t compete midweek for championships.”

Savage added that there is little interest in expanding the Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships for the same reason.

The expansion of the tournament fields has necessitated changing the manner in which the host school is determined. Previously, the regular-season champion automatically won the right to host the semifinal and final rounds. With the removal of the first-round bye, however, hosting rights now go to the highest-seeded team remaining after the quarterfinal contests, the same system used by both basketball teams and Men’s Ice Hockey. No top-seeded team in these sports has ever lost a quarterfinal game, dating back to the 2002-03 season.

In conjunction with the playoff field expansion, the NESCAC also moved the final game of the season for Field Hockey, Men’s and Women’s Soccer, and Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse from Saturday to Friday. The schedule was also reconfigured so that each school’s season finale is against its geographically closest or second-closest conference peer. For example, Wesleyan’s soccer and field hockey teams traditionally ended the season against Bowdoin, and its lacrosse teams’ season finales came against Bates. Now, all five teams end the season against Connecticut College, the second-closest NESCAC school to Wesleyan in terms of distance (50 miles).

In fall 2007 the Men’s Soccer team defeated Bowdoin in the regular season finale to clinch the fourth seed and a first-round home game, also against Bowdoin. The Cardinals had to ride back to Middletown less than 24 hours after enduring the 250-mile trip to Brunswick, Me., and followed up their 3-2 overtime victory with a 2-0 loss that snapped their ten-game winning streak and ended their season at 10-5. According to Savage, the experiences of teams such as Wesleyan men’s soccer and men’s lacrosse played a significant role in the decision to alter the conference schedule, as did the need to accommodate an additional quarterfinal game.

The Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse schedules were further altered to eliminate all but one midweek game, which, like the regular-season finale, is played against a nearby school. As a result, the conference schedule now begins two weeks earlier.

“It’s really to reduce missed class time and provide a round-robin schedule for all the teams; that’s at the heart of it,” Savage explained.

The overall effect of the schedule changes remains to be seen. It is already clear, however, that these alterations will benefit players, coaches, and fans alike.