CLAREMONT, Calif. - After a strong spring season that featured a national championship from men's golf, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletic finished in ninth place in the annual 2025-26 Division III Learfield Directors' Cup standings, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) announced today. 

CMS moved up from 32nd place after the winter season to ninth in the final standings, after a spring season when Stags golf captured its second national title in program history. The spring also saw men's tennis reach the national championship, women's tennis reach the national semifinals, women's track and field earn sixth, women's golf place seventh, baseball reach the Super Regionals to tie for ninth, and women's lacrosse advance to the second round. 

As a result of eight postseason qualifiers during the spring season, CMS earned 548.75 spring points to raise its total for the year to 888.25, just ahead of Amherst in tenth place (863.75). WashU (1266.50) edged out Tufts (1252.50) for first place, followed by Johns Hopkins, Emory, Williams, Chicago, NYU and Wisconsin-LaCrosse. MIT, Washington & Lee and Middlebury finished just outside the top 10 in 11th-13th place, respectively.

The 548.75 points was the highest total of any department in the country during the spring season. Tufts (512.75) was the only other department to break 500, while WashU was third with 479. The late surge also moved CMS moved back into the top 10 in the Learfield Directors' Cup final standings after finishing 12th a year ago. The Athenas and Stags have been in the top 15 for the last 13 seasons (not counting the two-year hiatus due to the pandemic), and have now been in the top 10 seven times during that span, including four of the last five years.   

In the fall, women's cross country earned a third-place finish at the NCAA Championships, while women's soccer, volleyball, and men's cross country also qualified for nationals. In the winter, women's swimming and diving came in tenth place at its NCAA Championship, while women's basketball, men's basketball and men's swimming and diving qualified for the NCAAs as well and added to the CMS point total. 

The Learfield Directors' Cup was developed as a joint effort between the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and USA Today. Points are awarded based on each institution's finish in NCAA Championships. Overall, 18 sports are counted in the final DIII standings, four of which must be men's and women's soccer and men's and women's basketball. The next highest (14 max.) sports scored for each institution, regardless of gender, are used in the standings.

A total of 18 of the 21 CMS sports qualified for their postseason competitions during the athletic year, with 16 earning points towards the Learfield Directors' Cup. Men's water polo (USA Water Polo Division III national champions) and women's water polo (runners-up) were not calculated in the standings, since their tournaments are not NCAA-sanctioned events (if the USA Water Polo tournament did count, the 100 points for a title and 90 for a runner-up finish would move CMS up from ninth to fourth).