Last night I was out to dinner with my Ole Miss girlfriend and we were talking about A&M playing Ole Miss. She started asking me questions and I realized I didn't really have any idea how competitions were won in college tennis. I played tennis in HS where we had played team tennis in the fall and individual tennis in the spring. Is college tennis something of an amalgamation of the two? You play dual meets for the benefit of the team but your better players are gearing up for an individual tournament?

That got us talking about other "Other Sports" that I didn't know much about either? Swimming & Diving, Track, CC. Are you competing on the individual level, but really just racking up points for your team? Is the winner of the Big 12 track meet the team that racks up the most points throughout the course of the meet? Is the person who swims the fastest in the 50fly at the NCAA championship considered the "National Champion" at the 50fly or does it just mean more points for their team at the national meet?

I know this might be confusing but its just something I realized I know very little about.

Tennis - The fall season pretty much all individual tournaments save for the team indoor championships. Spring is all dual matches with the top 64 singles players (32 for dubs I think) eligible for the individual NCAA championships immediately following the team championships.

So don't forget to support Conor, Austin and Will in the singles tournament that starts on 5/20.

I'll leave track and swimming to the others .

What cooter said about tennis. In tennis, you advance as a team, as well as an individual.

In T&F/CC/SwimDive you only advance as individuals/relays, so yes there is a NC in the 100m, 200m, etc. The teams are scored at NCAA's based on the performance of the individuals that qualified there.

Golf is like Tennis. Top X teams advance to the regional, and then top X teams from that advance to the NCAA tourny. Not sure if this changes from year to year or region to region, but this year in our region, it was top 6 women's teams and top 5 men's teams, I believe. Top 2 individuals at the regionals also advance to the NCAA tournament to compete for the individual championship, but all competing members (if they qualified as a team or an individual) are eligible for the individual national championship.

Hope that made sense, ask if it needs clarification or there's other, other sports you're curious about

Cross-country is combo of both. The top qualifiers from each region go to the NCAAs but if you're one of the top teams in your region (don't remember what places advance) then your whole team goes.

An example is Shadrack Songok. At A&M-CC he went to NCAAs because of his individual qualifying time and just competed to see how high he could place. This year at A&M the whole team qualified and all members got to go run and their places determined the team score.

One addition to GoBlue is that a team score is also accumulated from each individual event to crown a team champion.