The Collegiate Water Polo Association is a conference of colleges and universities in the Eastern United States that sponsor 19 men's teams and 17 women's teams that compete in varsity water polo.
[1] The winners of the conference tournaments earn one of the four spots in the NCAA Men's Water Polo Championship and one of the eight spots in the NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship.
The conference was founded in the early 1970s as the Mid Atlantic Conference by Dick Russell, the swimming and water polo coach at Bucknell University with member schools from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.
The following year, the conference went co-ed, raising the number of member teams to 55.
The CWPA continued expanding, entering the Northwest in 1998, the Great Plains and California in 1999, and now has membership in 43 of the contiguous 48 States.