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.[1] The winners of the conference tournaments earn one of the four spots in the NCAA Men's Water Polo Championship and one of the eight spots in the NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship. The CWPA sponsors club team competition in 17 men's divisions and 13 women's divisions across the United States.
The conference was founded in the early 1970s as the Mid Atlantic Conference by Dick Russell, the swimming and water polo coach at Bucknell University with member schools from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. The first conference championship was held in 1972, with Yale defeating Harvard.
The organization was run by the conference's coaches until a commissioner was hired in 1990. In 1993, the Mid Atlantic Conference admitted the full memberships of the New England and Southern Conferences, changing its name to the Mid Atlantic Conference with 39 varsity and club member schools. The following year, the conference went co-ed, raising the number of member teams to 55. As the organization expanded into the Midwest in 1995, the referees from the Eastern Water Polo Referees Association opted to go on strike, so the conference established its own refereeing bureau. With 95 teams from the Northeast, Midwest, and South, the conference took its present name in 1996.
The CWPA continued expanding, entering the Northwest in 1998, the Great Plains and California in 1999, and now has membership in 43 of the contiguous 48 States.[2][3]
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