CLAREMONT, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps volleyball team, which earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament with a dramatic five-set comeback win over La Verne in the SCIAC Championship, will head to Wesleyan (Conn.) for the NCAA regionals this Thursday-Saturday, opening up with a quarterfinal match on Thursday against Babson. 

CMS will be making its 12th straight NCAA appearance, including a national title win in 2017, as well as the 2023 season when it hosted nationals at Roberts Pavilion and reached the NCAA Semifinals. 

This year's bid was uncertain, as the Athenas were outside the cutoff to make it as an at-large bid in the NCAA's computer rankings (NPI) heading into the SCIAC Tournament. CMS earned a dramatic first-set win over Whittier in the semifinals, on its way to a 31-29, 25-20, 25-16 victory to advance to the finals against top-seeded La Verne. 

The Leopards, who spent eight weeks ranked at No. 1 and had only one loss all season, jumped out to a 2-0 win in dominant fashion (25-16, 25-17), but the Athenas flipped the script and won the next two sets to force it to a fifth. La Verne had championship point at 14-13 in the third, but Tournament Most Outstanding Player Brooke McKee wiped that point out with a kill, and then served the final two points, both of which resulted in Stella Gajar kills (one off an overpass on the serve receive, and the second after the Leopards were forced to give CMS a free ball). 

McKee moved into second place on the CMS single-season kill list with her 19 in the championship match, giving her 426 on the year. She trails only Nicole Kerkhof, who had 482 in 2013, a total she could reach if the Athenas have an extended postseason run. McKee also ranks fourth in career kills with 1161, and could move into second place ahead of Regina Saulsbury (1175 from 1997-00) and Emily Bennett (1180 from 2002-05). Kerkhof's career mark of 1447 is out of reach. 

Babson also received an at-large bid after falling to MIT in five sets in its conference finals, and now stands at 22-7 on the year. The winner of the CMS-Babson match will face wither Colby, the top seed in the region, or Marymount (Va.) in the regional semifinals on Friday. The other half of the bracket will feature host Wesleyan against NYU and Ithaca against Plymouth State. 

Match times and ticket information will be announced later today.