advancing to the eight-team championship bracket. To minimize travel costs, the matchups were determined by geographical proximity rather than seedings. In 2019, the championship field expanded from 10 to 12 teams, coinciding with two new conferences fulfilling the criteria for automatic qualification—the Division II Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) and the Division III Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. Accordingly, eight conference champions received automatic bids, and the NCAA Women's Bowling Committee selected four at-large teams to fill out the 12-team field. The top four teams were seeded into the Championship bracket, while the eight remaining teams competed in four play-in matches. The winners of these matches were seeded into the eight-team championship bracket. Qualifying rounds were eliminated in favor of a seeded double-elimination bracket. Each match within the bracket consisted of best-of-three matches using specified formats (five-person regular team matches, Baker total pinfall, and Baker match play). The championship finals were a best-of-seven match using Baker match play rules. The tiebreaker rule used through 2017 will still apply to Baker match play in the new format. From 2020 The championship was scheduled to expand to 16 teams in 2020. The number of automatic bids was reduced by one after the MIAA bowling league disbanded at the end of the 2018–19 season. Although five schools that had participated in the final season of MIAA bowling became part of the new bowling league of the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC), those schools were not in the same bowling league for a sufficient time to allow the GLVC to inherit the MIAA's automatic bid. The 2020 tournament was intended to be the first to feature regional play. The field was to be split into four regions, each with four teams competing at predetermined sites; each of the top four seeds as chosen by the NCAA selection committee would be placed in a separate regional. Each regional was to be played as a double-elimination tournament, with the format identical to that introduced for the championship event in 2019. All regional matches, except for what the NCAA calls "if necessary regional finals", are best-of-three matches bowled in the following order: five-person team, Baker total pinfall, Baker best-of-seven match play. Any "if necessary regional final" will be Baker best-of-seven. Regional winners will advance to the championship event, which will also be double-elimination. All matches will be bowled under the standard format for regionals (best-of-three matches using specified