ORANGE BEACH, Alabama - The SEC Women’s Soccer Tournament will once again be played at the Orange Beach Sportsplex on Oct. 29 through Nov. 4.

It will be 10th time that the facility has served as the host of the SEC Tournament, having hosted each event since the 2003 season.

The format of the tournament is a single-elimination tournament of the top 10 teams in the Conference based on winning percentage of Conference games (regardless of division). The tournament shall be played in a Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Sunday format with Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday designated as days off (practice days).

The winner of the nine-game tournament receives the SEC’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Championship.

Two games will be played on Monday at 4 and 6:30 p.m. Games begin at noon on Oct. 31 and will be played at 2:30, 5 and 7:30 p.m. Friday games will be played at 4 and 6:30 p.m. and Sunday’s championship match is set for 2:30 p.m.

Tournament seeding will be determined after Thursday night’s final regular season matches.

Broadcast schedule: Monday and Wednesday games will be broadcast by the SEC Digital Network (online at secdigitalnetwork.com), while Friday’s semi-final round games will be broadcast by ESPN 3. Sunday’s championship game will be broadcast at 2:30 p.m. on ESPNU.

History: The 2012 SEC Tournament will be the 20th in league history and the 10th in Orange Beach. The first 10 SEC Tournaments were played at campus sites with Vanderbilt serving as the inaugural host in 1993. The tournament returned to Nashville in 1999. It has also been played at Fayetteville (1994), Auburn (1995), Lexington (1996), Gainesville (1997), Tuscaloosa (1998), Athens (2000), Baton Rouge (2001) and Oxford (2002).

Florida leads the league with nine SEC Tournament titles. Tennessee is second with four while Kentucky and Vanderbilt each have two championships.

Local connection: Gulf Shores High School graduate Sophie Simantel is a freshman member of the Auburn University soccer team.