Wittenberg Second In Conference All-Sports Standings After Winter Season

Click on image to read NCAC release and view complete standings.

Springfield, Ohio — Two-thirds of the way through the 2010-11 school year, and Wittenberg University is locked in a tight race to defend its 2009-10 North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) All-Sports championship. Tiger teams posted top-five finishes in five of six winter sports competitions and currently stand in second place, just two points behind Denison University heading into the spring sports season.

Wittenberg finished the fall season with 51.0 points, just 3.5 ahead of Denison. The Big Red responded by winning three of the six championships in the winter to take the lead with 91.0 points, compared to 89.0 for the Tigers. Allegheny is close behind with 86.0, followed by Ohio Wesleyan with 85.5 and Kenyon with 85.0. Interestingly, just 18.5 points separate first-place Denison from seventh-place Oberlin.

The standings are updated at the end of the fall, winter and spring seasons each school year, with the All-Sports award, re-named last spring the Dennis M. Collins All-Sports Trophy in honor of the NCAC's first commissioner who passed away in June 2009, given annually to the school that performs the best across the NCAC's 23 championship sports. Ten points are awarded for a first-place finish, nine for a second, eight for a third, and so on. Men's and women's performances are combined, exemplifying the North Coast's commitment to equity and balance among programs.

Wittenberg won the NCAC All-Sports award in 1996 and 2010 and has three other runner-up finishes (1995, 2002 and 2003) since joining the conference in 1989. Denison has the most titles with 11, followed by Ohio Wesleyan with nine and Wooster with five. Wittenberg is the only one of the four schools to win the All-Sports trophy that was not a charter member of the NCAC, which started competition in 1984.

Wittenberg's best finish in the 2010-11 winter sports season was second place by the men's basketball team, which went on to reach the second round of the NCAA Division III Tournament. Men's swimming and diving placed fourth, while three other Tiger teams placed fifth — women's basketball, women's swimming and diving and women's indoor track and field. Men's indoor track and field placed seventh.

The spring season holds great promise for Wittenberg teams, starting with the nationally ranked men's golf squad, which won the 2010 NCAC title. The Tigers' women's golf team is a contender for the first-ever NCAC championship to be contested this year, while the men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse and women's tennis teams are all unbeaten in the early going.

Written By: Ryan Maurer

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