For nine days in May, the Champions Tennis Club in Chattanooga, Tennessee turned into the center of the Division III tennis universe. By the time the courts went quiet on May 26, two programs had climbed to the top of the mountain — one a familiar face chasing a small dynasty, the other a team finally back in the winner’s circle after years of knocking on the door. Here’s how the 2026 NCAA Division III men’s and women’s tennis championships played out.
The men: Chicago builds a quiet dynasty
If you blinked over the last five years, you missed Chicago becoming the team to beat. The Maroons captured their third national title in five seasons, edging Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 4–3 in a final that came down to the wire.
Getting there was no stroll. Chicago opened with shutout-flavored wins over Luther and Kenyon, then ground through the business end of the bracket: a 4–2 quarterfinal over Bowdoin, a 4–1 semifinal against Tufts, and finally that one-match-decides-it thriller against CMS. A 4–3 scoreline in a national final means somebody had to win the last point on the last court — and this time it was Chicago.
For Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, the result carried a painful familiarity. The Stags reached yet another championship match only to come up a single point short. It’s a program with a long, proud history of deep runs and an equally long list of near-misses on the final Saturday.
There was a consolation prize for CMS, though, and a big one. Advik Mareedu took the individual singles crown — and did it for the second year running, successfully defending the title he won in 2025. Back-to-back singles championships are rare air at any level. The doubles title, meanwhile, went across the bracket to Denison’s Ethan Green and Kael Shah, two names that had also qualified in singles.
Zoom out, and Chicago’s three titles still leave them chasing the all-time giants of DIII men’s tennis. UC Santa Cruz and Kalamazoo sit atop the record book with seven team championships each — a reminder that even a hot five-year stretch is just the beginning of a legacy.
The women: Wesleyan returns to the top
On the women’s side, Wesleyan (CT) authored the feel-good story of the tournament. The Cardinals won their second-ever national title — and first since 2019 — by handling defending champion Washington University in St. Louis 4–1 in the final.
WashU had arrived in Chattanooga as the reigning champ, having claimed the program’s first-ever title in 2025. The Bears made it back to the championship match, but Wesleyan’s depth proved decisive. The road there told the story: Wesleyan survived a 4–3 semifinal nail-biter against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps before pulling away in the final, while WashU dispatched Babson 4–1 to set up the rematch of recent powers.
The individual honors produced a couple of delightful subplots. Babson’s Matia Cristiani won the singles championship — and if her name rings a bell, it should: she’d previously stacked up back-to-back national doubles titles in 2024 and 2025. Trading a doubles pedigree for a singles crown is a serious flex. And in doubles, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps got on the board with Lindsay Eisenman and Rebecca Kong — with Eisenman herself a former singles champion (2025), now adding a doubles title to her résumé.
As dominant as the 2026 field was, the all-time women’s hierarchy remains the property of Williams, whose ten national championships tower over the rest of the division.
One venue, a few threads worth pulling
What made this year’s championships fun wasn’t just the trophies — it was the way the two tournaments rhymed. Both crowns were decided on the same Chattanooga courts, hosted by the University of the South (Sewanee), and both featured a familiar villain-slash-hero in Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. The Stags lost the men’s team final by a single point, yet their athletes still walked away with hardware on both sides: the men’s singles title (Mareedu) and the women’s doubles title (Eisenman and Kong). Few programs can lose a heartbreaker and still leave a national championship with individual gold in hand.
There’s also a nice symmetry in the champions themselves. Chicago entered as a quasi-favorite and confirmed its status as the program of the moment in men’s tennis. Wesleyan, by contrast, snapped a long title drought and reminded everyone that the women’s bracket has no permanent kings — just a rotating cast of contenders chasing Williams’ ghost.
The takeaway
The 2026 DIII tennis championships gave us a dynasty in progress, a triumphant return, two repeat-flavored individual stories, and a host city that sent everybody home with a story. Chicago and Wesleyan get their banners. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps gets the “so close” headlines and a couple of individual titles to soften the sting. And the rest of Division III gets a winter of offseason motivation before it all starts again next May.
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