The Division III Men’s Volleyball Championship will debut as a nine-team field beginning in 2012. A first-round match between two teams will be played April 21 on the campus of the higher-seeded team, and then the winner joins seven other teams for an eight-team tournament (quarterfinals, semifinals and final) at Springfield College (Springfield, MA) on April 27-29.

The selection announcement will be made April 15, with a selection show at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The NCAA legislation was jointly presented by Zak Ivkovic the commissioner of the CUNY Athletic Conference and Joe Walsh the commissioner of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference at the 2011 Convention and approved.

"We are thrilled for all the student-athletes that are going to be able to compete on a level playing field and glad that all our efforts have paid off," Ivkovic said at the time.

For the 2012 Division III men’s volleyball season, there will be six automatic-qualifying conferences with CUNYAC among them. As for regional alignment, the East region will consist of the City University of New York Athletic Conference, the Great Northeast Athletic Conference, the New England Collegiate Conference and the Skyline Conference. Independent institutions are MIT and Springfield. The West region includes the Continental Volleyball Conference and the United Volleyball Conference. Independent institutions are Lancaster Bible, Rust and St. Joseph’s (Brooklyn).

Until now, the only NCAA national championship tournament for which men's DIII schools were eligible was the same one in which Division I and II schools compete. Since 1997, USA Volleyball and the AVCA have co-hosted the Molten Division III Men's Invitational Volleyball Championship, which was held for the final time last year on April 15-16, 2011 at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y. CUNYAC Champion

USA Volleyball has supported and encouraged DIII schools to add men's volleyball teams with its grant program, which started in 1991. Since that time, and continuing in 2011, more than $276,000 in grant money has been awarded to more than 40 schools to help them implement new DIII men's volleyball programs.

Sixty colleges and universities around the country now have DIII men's volleyball teams in 2012, including John Jay which reinstated their team following an eight-year layoff. Fifty were required for the creation of a DIII National Championship.

John Williams, the Director of NCAA Division III Championship: "We are very excited to start our 89th NCAA championship with DIII Men's Volleyball. This is another opportunity for more student-athletes to compete for a national championship in a sport they specialize in and achieve a DIII education."