2012 NCAA DII Field Hockey Championships Homepage
LOWELL, Mass. – Top-ranked West Chester University will take on No. 2 Shippensburg in the 2012 NCAA Division II Field Hockey Semifinals Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. at Cushing Field Complex on the campus of UMass-Lowell.
Tickets to the 2012 NCAA Division II Field Hockey Championships are $8 for adults, $4 for senior citizens and students with valid ID, and $2 for children ages 2-12. Sunday’s championship game will be $6 for adults, $3 for senior citizens and students with valid ID and $1 for children. An all-session pass can be purchased on Friday for $12.
The other national semifinal pits Northeast-10 rivals Merrimack against host UMass-Lowell on Friday afternoon. The winners of the two semifinals play for the national championship on Sunday at 1 p.m. All three games this weekend will be web streamed live by the NCAA on its web site
www.ncaa.com. Live stats will also be available.
West Chester (18-2) and Shippensburg (17-2) are the only two schools to have been ranked No. 1 in the country at any point during the season, and the two institutions have occupied both first and second spots in the national polls every week since the second week of the year. In the nine national polls conducted this fall, Shippensburg has been No. 1 five times while West Chester held the top spot four times, including the final poll last week.
The Golden Rams dropped a 3-0 decision to the Raiders in Shippensburg on Sept. 8. It marked the only time this year that West Chester was shut out. These two squads met in the NCAA first round in 2011 in Shippensburg with the Rams taking a 3-0 victory en route to its national championship. West Chester is 4-0 in the NCAA Division II Tournament, after winning all three contests a year ago and defeating Indiana (Pa.) in the first round last Saturday.
West Chester is trying to become the first school to repeat as Division II national champions since Bloomsburg rattled off four straight national titles from 2006-09. The Golden Rams are coming off a Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship that it won on its own home turf on Oct. 27. The Rams then defeated IUP in the first round of the NCAAs.
Only three other teams in West Chester’s storied field hockey career have won more than 18 games. The 1977 and 1978 AIAW national champions won 20 games, and the 1987 Golden Rams won 19 games.
