Berry among 240 playoff sites selected by the NCAA

Will Hoogendyk IV, Campus Carrier sports editor

On October 2, a historic decision was made impacting Berry College and the city of Rome, Georgia: the NCAA announced every host location for Divisions I, II and III national championships and for the first time ever, Berry College was chosen to host one of these prestigious tournaments. In conjunction with the Rome Sports Commission, Berry will host the Division III national championships for Men’s and Women’s Tennis for the 2027-28 academic year at the Rome Tennis Center.

Every four years, the NCAA conducts an in-depth selection process where they decide where the championships will be hosted for 87 out of the 90 championships they offer. They put almost all of their bids up for grabs simultaneously, and this year received upwards of 1,200 bids from member schools, conferences, cities and sports commissions across the nation.

While the city is primarily responsible for putting together a bid for a national championship, they cannot do so without an NCAA member school sponsor supporting them. Athletic Director Angel Mason, who is in her fifth year at Berry, explained the comprehensive process that proposing a bid includes.

 “Lots of cities want to put in [bids] to host different championships because of the tourism that it brings to the location,” Mason said. “No city can put into host an event without an NCAA sponsored school as a partner. They completed the bid for this National Championship, [and] we are their supporting institution.”

Berry came alongside the city of Rome during the bid process by sending letters of support to the NCAA to strengthen Rome’s candidacy as a host. The final bids were due in March of 2024, with Berry’s contributions already submitted earlier in February. 

The main part of the application process involves the potential host city and college proving to the NCAA that they would be able to meet the expectations put forth by the NCAA for all the details that go into hosting a championship. Mason spoke about this process as well.

“There’s a lot of regulations around doing it. You have to be able to guarantee hotels. You have to be able to guarantee a divide of hotels between the teams that are taking part and the officials that are going to be assigned. You have to be within a certain mile radius in order to put in those hotels, you have to have certain locker rooms specifications and so on. So there are a number of things that go along with a bid for each individual sport.”

While Berry has hosted conference tournaments in the past, the guidelines that come along with hosting a championship on a national scale make it a much more laborious process to complete.

“There’s a difference between running events like the city likes to do them and running events by the requirements of the NCAA,” Mason said. 

Part of what made Berry College and the city of Rome so competitive compared to other schools that applied to host tennis was the Rome Tennis Center facility itself. Land for the RTC was donated in 2008 by Berry and construction started in 2014. By July of 2016 the facility was completed and today it is recognized as the largest single-surface tennis facility in the nation boasting 57 courts across 30 acres of land.

Because the tournament is still four years out from being hosted, most preparations won’t start until closer to when the championships actually start. Even so, the city of Rome planned ahead for these regulations in their proposal to win the bid. Mason shared what the city has already been looking at and what they will have to do moving forward.

“The city will have to start blocking off hotels so that people can’t book them,” Mason said. “They’ll have to decide what the branding will be. They’ll have to decide which courts they’ll select for the live streaming, but it’ll be much closer to the championship. Most likely people will take the year before and visit whoever is hosting the national championship just to make sure that they’re in line.”
This marks the biggest tournament the Rome Tennis Center has ever hosted although, Rome is no stranger to welcoming collegiate tennis teams to Georgia. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) tennis tournaments for men and women were played here in Rome in 2017, 2021 and 2022.

Forty states as well as the District of Columbia were among those chosen to host an NCAA championship event. Florida garnered the most with 22 total over the next four years. Georgia won five title bids spread out among Berry, Georgia Southern, and the UGA. Of the five, three of them are tennis championships with UGA hosting the Division I finals in 2026 and 2027.