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NAIA women's basketball championship
College basketball tournament From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The NAIA women's basketball tournament has been held annually by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics since 1981 to determine the national champion of women's college basketball among its members in the United States and Canada.
The tournament was created to crown a women's national title for smaller colleges and universities, debuting one year before the first NCAA women's basketball tournament in 1982.
From 1992 to 2020, the NAIA sponsored two championships, one for its Division I members and another for those in its Division II. Both tournaments moved venues several times during the existences, with the final locations ultimately being Billings, Montana for Division I and Sioux City, Iowa for Division II. During this time, the NAIA tournaments featured 32 teams with the entire events contested at a single arena over the course of one week. Following renewals, the 2018 and 2019 tournaments were held in those same cities, but the 2020 tournaments were called off due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
From 2021, the two tournaments were merged back into a single event, which initially featured 48 teams in 2021 before expanding to 64 teams in 2022. Since the expansion of the tournament to its current size, the format of the event has featured teams beginning play at one of sixteen regional sites with the winners of those regionals advancing to play in a final, four-round national tournament in Sioux City.
Dordt are the defending champions, winning their first national title in 2024, and again in 2025.
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Single division (1981–1991)
For the first eleven years that the NAIA sponsored women's basketball, it held a single national championship for all programs across its entire membership. The tournament field was initially set at eight before later expansions to 16 and 32 teams.
Division I (1992–2020)
The NAIA Women's Basketball National Championship Tournament was most recently held at the Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark in Billings, Montana, which hosted from 2017 until the return to a single division after the 2019–20 season.[1] The NAIA was the only international intercollegiate athletic association in North America; the NAIA Division I Women's Basketball Championship was the first championship to feature a college from outside the United States in the championship game. Former member Simon Fraser University was the national DI runner-up in 1996 and 1997. Oklahoma City University has the most tournament championships with 9, and most championship game appearances with 11.
Single division (2021–present)
In 2018, the NAIA announced a new format for the 2021 tournament after the merger of Divisions I and II.
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Champions
- Division II titles are not included in this list. Schools in italics are no longer in the NAIA.
Oklahoma City
Dordt
Clarke
Montana Western
FHU
MNU
National championships among active programs: 
9, 
2, 
1
9, 
2, 
1Active programs
Former programs
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See also
- NAIA Division II Women's Basketball Championship
- AIAW women's basketball tournament
- NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament
- NCAA Division II women's basketball tournament
- NCAA Division III women's basketball tournament
- NAIA Men's Basketball Championships
- NAIA Division II Men's Basketball Championship
References
External links
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