The 2021 NCAA National Collegiate Women's Water Polo Championship was the 19th edition of the

NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship The NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship has existed since the 2001 season. Seven conferences have teams competing in women's water polo: the Big West Conference, the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA), the single-sport Golden Coast Conferen ...

, the annual tournament to decide the championship of

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

women's collegiate

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...

. The tournament was held May 14–16, 2021, at the

Spieker Aquatics Center The Spieker Aquatics Center is a 2,500-capacity stadium in Los Angeles, California used by UCLA water polo, swimming, and diving teams. The $14-million center was built in 2009 and is named for Tod and Catherine Spieker. Tod was a student-athl ...

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, hosted by the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA).

Qualifying teams

The field of teams was revealed in a selection show on May 3, 2021. Seven conferences were granted automatic qualification to the championship: the

Big West Conference The Big West Conference (BWC) is an American collegiate athletic conference whose member institutions participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I. The conference was originally formed on July 1, 1969, as the Pacific ...

Collegiate Water Polo Association The Collegiate Water Polo Association is a conference of colleges and universities in the Eastern United States that sponsor 19 men's teams and 17 women's teams that compete in varsity water polo. The winners of the conference tournaments earn one ...

Golden Coast Conference The Golden Coast Conference (GCC) is a collegiate athletic conference in the United States in which its members compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association National Collegiate (D-NC) division. The conference sponsors one sport, water p ...

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC, ) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I. Of its current 11 full members, 10 are located in three states of the northeastern United States: Connecticut, New Jersey, and ...

Mountain Pacific Sports Federation The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) is a college athletic conference with members located mostly in the western United States, although it now has members as far east as Pennsylvania. The conference participates at the NCAA Division I ...

Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference The Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) is a college athletic conference that operates in the NCAA's Division III. The conference was founded in 1915 and it consists of twelve small private schools that are located in ...

, and

Western Water Polo Association The Western Water Polo Association (WWPA) is a single sport intercollegiate college athletic conference sponsoring men's and women's water polo. The WWPA is affiliated with the NCAA, and includes 15 member institutions, mostly in California, with ...

. Three additional teams gained entry into the tournament with at-large bids, with all of them coming from the MPSF.

Schedule and results

All times

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

( UTC-07:00).

Tournament bracket

Game summaries

Opening round

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ncaa Women's Water Polo Championship

NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship NCAA Women's Water Polo Women's sports in California