The Tiger volleyball team reached the NCAA Division III Tournament semifinals for a third straight year to highlight a tremendous fall season for the Wittenberg Department of Athletics.

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Wittenberg University ended the fall sports season ranked 21st among more than 430 NCAA Division III schools in the Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings, administered by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). Click here to read the NACDA news release.

Wittenberg has finished in the top 30 percent of all NCAA Division III schools in each of the standings' 12 years of existence. Wittenberg's best previous finish in the annual standings was 20th in the 2002-03 school year, and the Tigers ranked 120th in 2006-07.

It takes a strong all-around performance to gain such a lofty standing in the largest of the four collegiate athletic divisions (NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III and NAIA). With 147 points, Wittenberg was the highest ranking North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) or Ohio NCAA Division III institution after scoring points in women's soccer and volleyball.

The Directors' Cup finish puts Wittenberg, which leads the NCAC all-sports standings after the fall season, in the same company as such academically distinguished colleges as Williams College (Mass.), Middlebury College (Vt.), Amherst College (Mass.), New York University and Washington University (Mo.), all of which also ranked in the top 20. In addition, the Tigers showed well against schools with much larger enrollments, including the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the College of New Jersey and the State University of New York at Cortland, all of which are also among the top 20 after the fall sports season.

The Directors' Cup, presented annually since 1996 by NACDA, is based on schools' finishes at their respective national championships. Developed as a joint effort between USA TODAY and NACDA, the Directors' Cup program is the only national awards and academic scholarship program to recognize all NCAA and NAIA championship sports for both women's and men's athletics.