Ithaca claimed five Empire 8 championships during the fall sports season to lead the conference's standings as the top intercollegiate athletics program in the Empire 8.
Ithaca, which has claimed the last 15 Empire 8 Commissioner's Cups, scored 64 out of a possible 70 points and leads the conference with a .914 percentage, edging out Stevens Institute of Technology (.902).
Standings for the Commissioner's Cup are determined by a schools' finish in the standings or championship tournaments within the conference-sponsored sports.
Ithaca claimed conference titles in men's and women's cross country, women's golf, women's tennis and women's volleyball, while finishing second in field hockey, men's soccer, and women's soccer.
The women's volleyball team swept Williams in an NCAA first-round clash and won the first set of its second-round clash with Clarkson before falling in four sets. Ithaca finished with 31 victories, the most wins for the Bombers since 2005.
Women's tennis captured its 11th straight Empire 8 crown with a 5-1 win over Stevens Oct. 18. The Bombers (11-0) won 94 of a possible 96 games en route to the program's 14th Empire 8 championship in 17 years.
Women's golf won the program's sixth straight title after carding a 27-hole score of 518, while both Bomber cross country programs prevailed Oct. 31 in Houghton, N.Y. as the women claimed their 13th straight Empire 8 title, and the men secured their sixth straight championship. Three runners: Sawyer Hitchcock, Taryn Cordani, and Denise Ibarraqualified for the upcoming NCAA Division III cross country championships.
Additionally, women's soccer secured an at-large berth into NCAA's and battled Catholic before losing 1-0 in a first-round contest. Men's soccer and field hockey claimed regular-season championships and hosted the conference tournaments before falling in their respective conference championships.
With the five conference championships this fall, Ithaca has now won 175 Empire 8 titles throughout all three seasons dating back to 1999.
Commissioner's Cup points are awarded based on each team's finish in the Empire 8 standings at the completion of the season. Points are awarded on a scale dependent upon the number of schools that sponsor the sport. Affiliate members are not calculated into the point scale.
The conference championship team in each sport receives the highest amount of points, followed by the runner-up. Teams tied for a position are ranked based on tiebreaker scenarios. The actual amount of points earned is then divided by the amount of possible points for each school based on conference-sponsored sports to determine percentage.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20151117220550826