Emily Dixon (right) and Jan Kehres show off the NCAC Tournament championship trophy after Saturday's win at Hiram.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — The Wittenberg University volleyball team, ranked sixth in the nation after a tremendous 30-4 record in the regular season, has earned the opportunity to play in the NCAA Division III Tournament for the 11 th time in school history and the 10th year in a row. Wittenberg, the No. 1 seeded team in the Great Lakes Regional bracket, has also been selected as the host site for the eight-team competition for the third time in the last four years.

The host Tigers will face Fontbonne (Mo.) University in a first round match Thursday, one of four matches scheduled for that day in Wittenberg’s HPER Center. The regional semifinals, matching the winners of Thursday’s four matches, will take place Friday and the championship match is scheduled Saturday, Nov. 12. Ticket prices are $7 for adults and $5 for students with identification.

The winner of the Great Lakes Regional bracket will advance to the national tournament with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals set for Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 17-19, in Salem, Va.

The Great Lakes Regional figures to be a challenging bracket again in 2005. The Tigers open with Fontbonne, the champion of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) and an NCAA Division III Tournament participant in each of the last six years, at 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The winner of that quarterfinal match will face a stern challenge in Friday's 7 p.m. regional semifinal match as nationally ranked Ohio Northern University, runner-up in the rugged Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC), squares off with nationally ranked College of Mount St. Joseph, champion of the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC), are pitted against one another in a quarterfinal that will start at 1 p.m. Thursday.

The bottom part of the regional bracket includes Calvin College, the champion of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, against Hiram College, the 2005 NCAC regular season champion, in a quarterfinal that is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Rounding things out, Millikin University, runner-up in the Collegiate Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW), opposes OAC champion Capital, the fourth nationally ranked squad in the eight-team bracket, at 6 p.m. Winners of those two matches will square off in the first regional semifinal match on Friday, scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m.

Wittenberg advanced to the NCAA Division III Tournament with a pair of wins last weekend in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Tournament. In winning the conference tourney for the ninth straight year, the Tigers swept Denison University, 3-0, in Friday’s semifinals and Hiram College, 3-1, in Saturday’s championship match at Hiram. Wittenberg, which has won 24 straight NCAC Tournament matches, dating back to 1996, was the second seed in the tournament after Hiram ended the Tigers’ eight-year run atop the NCAC regular season standings.

After the Tigers advanced to the national quarterfinals a year ago, the 2005 season had all the earmarks of a rebuilding project. However, with a pair of seniors, middle hitter Emily Dixon of Granville, Ohio, and Linda Young of Minster, Ohio, providing both quality play and outstanding leadership, Wittenberg has brushed aside such muted expectations. While Wittenberg’s run of 63 consecutive NCAC regular season victories came to an end, the Tigers rallied behind the all-around play of sophomore outside hitters Emily Bell of Fort Wayne, Ind., and Jan Kehres of Alliance, Ohio, and the efficient offensive performance of freshman outside hitter Jackie Williams of Rocky River, Ohio, to capture the NCAC Tournament. Wittenberg has momentum heading into the postseason with 14 straight wins.

The Tigers have reached the Sweet 16 six times in school history and the national quarterfinals twice, in 2002 and 2004. Wittenberg’s all-time record in NCAA Division III Tournament action is 9-10.