MADISON, N.J. - For the second time in school history and the first time since 2010, the Drew University women's tennis team will compete in the NCAA Division III Championships when it joins five other teams in a first, second, and third-round pod at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. from Friday through Sunday.

The Rangers (12-8) will take on Stevens (11-4) in the first round on Friday at a time to be announced, with the other first-round matchup featuring 21st-ranked Washington and Lee and St. Mary's (Md.). The winner of the Drew/Stevens match will move on to the second round on Saturday to face third-ranked Wesleyan (Conn.), while the W&L/St. Mary's winner will face 15th-ranked Mary Washington. The two second-round winners will meet in the third round and the final match of the regional on Sunday.

Drew and Stevens will be squaring off in a rematch from their meeting back on March 23, when the Ducks captured an 8-1 decision in the Simon Forum.

Drew received an automatic bid in the tournament by virtue of its 5-2 victory over Moravian in the Landmark Conference final this past Saturday. Stevens also earned an automatic bid after defeating Wilkes 5-1 in the final of the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) Freedom Conference Championships.

The Rangers are 1-1 all-time in the NCAA Championships. They defeated Western Connecticut State 5-0 in their NCAA debut in 2010 before dropping a 5-0 decision to Carnegie Mellon in the second round the same year.

Led by Head Coach Scott Veith, Drew carries a 10-match winning streak into the national tournament and have not lost since their matchup with Stevens. During that span, the team went 7-0 in Landmark Conference regular-season play to earn the top seed in the conference championships. They went on to beat Scranton 5-3 in the semifinals before their championship-match win over Moravian. 

Stevens enters the NCAA Championships on a nine-match winning streak and hasn't lost since its 9-0 setback at Haverford, ranked 35th at the time, back on March 26. The Ducks also went undefeated in conference playing, posting a 7-0 mark in the MAC Freedom. 

Washington and Lee (15-6) captured the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) title this past Sunday with its 5-0 win over Sweet Briar while St. Mary's defeated Penn State Harrisburg 5-3 in the United East Conference championship match. Wesleyan claimed the New England Small College Athletic Conference's automatic bid on Sunday with a 5-4 win over No. 2 Middlebury, while Mary Washington earned a 5-1 victory over No. 25 Christopher Newport in the Coast-to-Coast Athletic Conference championship.

Forty-nine teams are competing in the 2022 NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championships. The teams will play a single-elimination tournament with the first, second- and third-rounds played at regional sites, Friday-Sunday, May 13-15, or Thursday-Saturday, May 12-14. The United States Tennis Association, Oglethorpe University, and the Greater Orlando Sports Commission will host the team championships finals, which will be held May 23-25 at USTA National Campus in Orlando. 

Automatic qualification (AQ) is granted to 39 conference champions, which form "Pool A."  One team will be selected from true independents and schools from conferences that do not have an automatic bid for their champions (Pool B).  The remaining nine teams are selected from those teams in conferences with automatic bids that did not win their conference's AQ and the remaining Pool B institutions (Pool C). The teams are geographically paired, whenever possible.