Scoring Update for Division III

June 12, 2001

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - Williams College (Mass.) defended its title as the best athletics program in NCAA Division III competition by winning its fifth Sears Directors' Cup, the prestigious award presented annually by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) to the best overall collegiate athletics programs in the country.

The 2000-01 Sears Directors' Cup winners were announced today at the NACDA Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the four winning institutions -- one in each of the NCAA Divisions (I, II, and III) and the NAIA -- were awarded with their Sears Directors' Cups and scholarships.

Williams College won its fifth Sears Directors' Cup in the last six years by posting 897.5 points, 169 points ahead of runner-up Middlebury College (Vt.). The Ephs' won national championships in women's and men's tennis and posted seven additional top 10 finishes: women's cross country (2nd), women's swimming and diving (3rd), women's indoor track and field (3rd), men's soccer (5th), men's cross country (5th), field hockey (5th) and men's outdoor track and field (7th). Also adding points for Williams were the men's swimming and diving (12th), skiing (12th), baseball (17th) and men's golf (17th) teams. The Ephs scored in six women's and seven men's sports.

Developed as a joint effort between USA TODAY and NACDA, the Sears Directors' Cup program is the only all-sports competition that recognizes the institution in each of the four categories with the best overall athletics program. The Sears Directors' Cup is part of the Sears Collegiate Champions program which annually awards more than 2,200 conference and sport champion trophies and a quarter-of-a-million dollars in academic scholarships.

While Williams took home the Waterfordâ Crystal Sears Directors' Cup for NCAA Division III competition, the 2000-01 winners in the other categories include: Division I - Stanford University; Division II - University of California-Davis; NAIA - Simon Fraser University (B.C.).

Through the Sears Directors' Cup program, Sears and NACDA annually award $100,000 in postgraduate academic scholarships. Five $5,000 scholarships in each division assist students who support their institution's athletics departments, including team managers, athletics trainers, band members, cheerleaders, assistant coaches, sports information assistants, facility staff and academic support personnel. For each category, four outstanding recipients are selected by a nationwide nomination process, administered by NACDA, while the fifth recipient is a student at the institution that wins the Sears Directors' Cup.

Sears and NACDA also awarded each of the second through fifth place institutions in all four divisions with Sears Directors' Cup plaques, commemorating their program's dedication to athletics greatness. This year's runner-up institutions in the NCAA Division III include: Middlebury College (Vt.), The College of New Jersey, Emory University (Ga.) and Ithaca College (N.Y.).

Of the 395 eligible colleges and universities in the NCAA Division III, a total of 270 (68 percent) scored points in the Sears Directors' Cup competition. Complete final rankings on all of these institutions are available on NACDA's Web site at www.nacda.com.

NACDA, now in its 36th year, serves as the professional and educational association for more than 6,100 collegiate athletics directors, associates, assistants and conference administrators at more than 1,600 institutions throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. is a leading U.S. retailer of apparel, home and automotive products and services, with annual revenue of nearly $40 billion. The company serves families throughout the country through approximately 860 department stores, more than 2,100 specialized retail locations, and a variety of online offerings accessible through the company's Web site, www.sears.com.

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