NESCAC Final Four: Unbeaten Tufts Host Williams, Then Middlebury Meet Bowdoin for a Place in Sunday’s Final
The NESCAC season comes down to one weekend in Medford, and the team everybody has to beat is the team hosting it.
Top seed Tufts will stage the semi-finals and final of the 2026 NESCAC Championship at Ounjian Field on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November, for the second year in a row. The Jumbos earned that right the hard way: a 4-0 quarter-final win over Colby took them to 16-0, a perfect season so far, and they are the defending NCAA champions chasing a fourth NESCAC title after 2024, 2016 and 2009.
Saturday’s first semi-final, at 11am, is Tufts against fourth seed Williams (11-5). Williams got here with a 2-0 quarter-final win over Hamilton, and this will be the eighth tournament meeting between the two schools, the seventh in a semi-final. Tufts already beat Williams 3-2 in the regular season, but they had to come from behind twice that day, so nobody in Medford will be treating this as a formality.
The second semi-final, at 1:30pm, is second seed Middlebury (14-2) against third seed Bowdoin (13-3). Middlebury are here because of a moment: Addie Chandler buried a penalty stroke with 48 seconds left to beat Amherst 1-0 in the quarter-finals, a win that sent the Panthers to the semi-finals for the 14th straight season and earned Chandler NESCAC Player of the Week honours for the second time in her career. She has converted five of her six penalty strokes this season, and Bowdoin will know exactly who to watch if this one is tight late on. Bowdoin, meanwhile, are back in the semi-finals for the first time since 2021, and they already know they can live with the best: they lost just 1-0 to Tufts in the regular season.
The final is on Sunday at noon, admission is free, and every game streams on the NESCAC Network. An unbeaten champion-elect, a defending NCAA champion’s home field, and a Middlebury side that keeps finding a way late. That’s a proper final weekend.
