The entire NCAA women’s basketball tournament will be held in the San Antonio area

The NCAA women’s basketball tournament will be held on six courts at five locations in the San Antonio region from March 21 to April 4, it was announced on Friday. Alamodome will host the Women’s Final Four, Elite Eight and Sweet 16. All 63 games of the 64 team event will be televised by the ESPN family of networks and available on the ESPN app. No decision has yet been made on fan participation.

The first round will be in three cities: San Antonio; Austin, Texas; and San Marcos, Texas. All subsequent games will be in San Antonio.

The Alamodome had previously been scheduled to host the 2021 Women’s Four, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire event was moved to that area for security reasons. The COVID-19 test will run throughout the event, and the NCAA will work with the San Antonio metro health department on approved medical protocols.

NCAA and San Antonio officials explained the reason for locating the tournament in a Zoom conference call with reporters on Friday.

“We are sure that a geographic region allows us to focus on the potential benefits of conducting certain security measures in a controlled environment with competitive and practical venues, medical resources and accommodation for teams and officials, all close by,” Division I Women’s Basketball Committee chair Nina King said.

The first round is from March 21st to 22nd. The games in San Antonio will be played at Alamodome (which will have two courts), Bill Greehey Arena at St. Mary’s University and UTSA Convocation Center. The games in Austin will be at the Frank Erwin Center at the University of Texas, and the games in San Marcos will be at the Strahan Arena in Texas State.

In the second round, from March 23 to 24, all games will be at the three venues in San Antonio. After that, all games will be at Alamodome. The regional semifinals will be held from 27 to 28 March, the regional finals from 29 to 30 March and the Fourth Final on 2 and 4 April. The Alamodome will be reconfigured for just one block for the Final Four.

The NCAA tournament field will be unveiled on Monday, March 15 (ESPN / ESPN App, 7:00 pm Eastern time). Team trips will have a maximum of 34 people, all teams will be hosted at seven hotels in San Antonio’s Bexar County under Tier 1 criteria, which require daily testing.

Team travel group members will need seven days of negative COVID-19 tests before leaving for San Antonio. Teams will take chartered planes and buses to San Antonio to avoid exposure during the trip and then remain in their own groups for the duration of the tournament.

“We spent weeks talking about these protocols,” said Dr. Colleen Bridger, assistant city manager with oversight of the San Antonio Metropolitan Sanitary District. “These are the same protocols that are being used in the NCAA men’s tournament. I am very impressed with the team of medical professionals that they have put together.”

Players will dine in their hotel rooms or in specific team rooms that guarantee social distance.

“This was not designed as an event where a group of people is gathering,” said Bridger. “This is being very well managed and orchestrated to prevent this.”

Training for all teams will be on the two blocks of the Alamodome and at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which can accommodate nine blocks. San Antonio has hosted the Women’s Final Four in 2002 and 2010.

“We are fortunate to work with San Antonio, which features one of the most experienced local organizing committees in the country,” said Lynn Holzman, vice president of women’s basketball at the NCAA.

The teams that play in the first round in Austin and San Marcos will be transported there. King and Holzman said that sowing principles and procedures will help determine which teams will go to these locations.

Holzman has said that this is now an entire neutral website tournament. If Texas is on the field, the Longhorns will not play in the first round on their own court, at the Erwin Center.

Holzman said the plans will be in place if an outbreak of COVID-19 occurs during the NCAA tournament.

“There are still a variety of contingency plans; this is a fact for any NCAA championship,” she said. “There will have to be risk management plans in place.

“I want to emphasize the health and safety protocols that were established for the championship – with an emphasis on masking, physical distance and others [things] – it is with the objective that if contact tracking has to be initiated due to a positive case … so as not to impact the entire team. “

Holzman said the intention is to allow family members / friends of student-athletes (up to six per person) to enter the games. But even that decision – plus any subsequent decision to allow other fans in – will be affected by health authority directives and any specific limitations for the venues.

She added that the AT&T Center, home to the NBA Spurs and a former NCAA women’s regional website, was considered for this year’s women’s tournament, but several circumstances prevented its use.

Decisions to transfer some of the first round games to San Marcos and Austin were made to ensure that facilities existed that met all NCAA standards and the necessary criteria for transmissions.