NCR Maps Out How Members Can Qualify for 2024 CRC Sevens
NCR Maps Out How Members Can Qualify for 2024 CRC Sevens
National Collegiate has mapped out how teams can qualify for its spring-culminating tournament, the CRC, which will be held once again in late April.
It's fairly unprecedented for a US collegiate organization to have such a qualification process mapped out this early—unprecendented and, for many, refreshing.
The CRC will hold eight brackets at the Maryland Soccerplex in Germantown, Md. April 26-28. There are over 140 slots for the tournament, with 16 slots set aside for four women's brackets (Premier, DI, DII, Small College) and three men's brackets (DI, DII, and Small College) while the Men's Premier tournament is planned to have 32 teams.
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That's what's planned. For the 2023 tournament the men's Small-College bracket actually had 18 teams, while the women's Small-College and DII each had 12. The women's DI has eight teams. The men's DI and DII in 2023 had 12 teams each while the Men's Premier did indeed have 32 teams. So we might see some flexibility in the numbers as time goes on.
Conference 7s championships will fill many of these spots, with the Men's Premier including a number of open tournaments that will provide an opportunity for a national bid. Men's DII has one of those tournaments, as well. Men's Small-College is mostly about open qualifier tournaments rather than conference championships.
The remainder of the spots will be filled in from at-large candidates. Those are usually teams that finish 2nd or perhaps 3rd in a conference, or had some other body of work deemed worthy by NCR. The first open qualifier for Men's Premier is the Frostbite 7s March 2 in Lancaster, Pa.
See NCR's ongoing list of relevant tournaments here>>
The CRC is the biggest, but isn't the only major collegiate 7s tournament out there. While it's clear that CRAA won't have a 7s-heavy spring as their stated goal is to have teams play more 15s, there is expected to be a D1AA 7s tournament in the West, and we should see plans for other divisional championship tournaments. They won't all, however, be in one place like the CRC.
