The Big Ten softball tournament is the conference championship tournament in

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

for the

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 ...

Division I

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

. The winner of the tournament receives the conference's automatic bid to the

NCAA Division I softball tournament The NCAA Division I softball tournament is held annually in May/June and features 64 college softball teams in the United States, culminating in the Women's College World Series (WCWS), which is played in Oklahoma City. Tournament play and team s ...

History

The Big Ten softball tournament began in 1982 and then took a hiatus until the tournament was reinstated in 1995. The tournament was held from 1995–2008 until the Big Ten switched back to using the regular season champion for the automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament. The Big Ten reinstated the conference tournament in 2013 and has been held at the conclusion of the regular season ever since. Tournaments held in 1982 and 1995–2003 used a double elimination format. Tournaments from 2004–2008 and 2013–present have used a single elimination format. The inaugural tournament in 1982 included Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Ohio State, which were the only Big Ten schools with varsity softball programs at the time. Penn State started Big Ten play in 1992 after a few years of independence and playing in the Atlantic 10 Conference. Purdue began their program in 1995, followed by Wisconsin in 1996 and Illinois in 2001. Nebraska left the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

and joined the Big Ten for the 2012 season, and then Maryland and Rutgers came on board in 2015 from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the

Big East Conference The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and ...

, respectively. When USC and UCLA join the Big Ten Conference for the 2024-2025 school year, UCLA will begin league play for the 2025 season. As of 2022, USC does not have a softball program nor any intention of starting one up after performing a study around 2002.

Champions

By year

By school

References

External links