TRAFFORD, Pa. (April 5) -- The Thiel College Men's Volleyball team has secured the No. 1 seed and hosting rights in next week's inaugural Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC) Championship Tournament as the league office announced the official 2025 bracket Saturday. 

Admission to all PAC Championship Tournament matches is free for all Thiel students with a valid student ID, $5 for adults and $2 for opposing students. Cash is the ONLY acceptable form of payment.

This is the first season the PAC has sponsored men's volleyball as a championship sport. The six-team championship tournament, which begins with a pair of quarterfinal round matches Tuesday, will determine this year's PAC champion. The winner of this year's championship tournament will also receive the league's automatic qualifying bid to the NCAA Division III Championship.

Grove City will be the second seed and receive a first-round bye along with the Tomcats. In Tuesday's 7 p.m. quarterfinal matches, No. 3 Hiram will host No. 6 Chatham and No. 4 Geneva will host No. 5 Saint Vincent. The Tomcats will square off with the Geneva/Saint Vincent winner in the semifinals Thursday on Maenpa Court at Beeghly Gymnasium. The Hiram/Chatham winner will play at Grove City Thursday. Both semifinal matches will begin at 7 p.m. The championship match will be played Saturday, April 12, at a to-be-determined time. 

The PAC Sports Network will provide live streaming coverage of Thiel's semifinal match as well as the title game.

Thiel capped an extraordinary 20-6 regular season Friday with a 3-1 win over Hiram to tie the 2013 program record for wins in a season. The Tomcats concluded conference action unblemished at 12-0 for the first time in team history.

The Blue and Gold ride a 13-match winning streak, the longest in team history and longest of any PAC school this season, into tournament play. Thiel's last loss came on Feb. 15, nearly two months ago, at non-conference foe Buffalo State. The Tomcats avenged that loss with a 3-1 triumph over the Bengals on March 23. 

Thiel aims to win its second conference championship in program history and make its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The 2019 Tomcats captured the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference championship but did not make the NCAA Tournament as the league did not have an automatic bid.