Monthly Archives: September 2010

Conference shuffle drifts south

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The announcement today of Shenandoah joining the Old Dominion Athletic Conference has the potential to restart the rearrangement of conference affiliations that started with the departure of football schools from the MAC, the creation of the Landmark Conference for all sports and has reached as far north as the Empire 8 and Liberty League.

Shenandoah’s departure, which takes effect with the 2012-13 season, leaves the USA South in a big hole. All of their men’s sports, other than football, face the potential of losing their automatic bid. Just six full-time members of the conference have men’s sports: Averett, Christopher Newport, Ferrum, Greensboro, Methodist and North Carolina Wesleyan. In football, Maryville is an associate member of the USA South, leaving the conference with the minimum seven members required for an automatic bid.

After a two-year grace period, the automatic bid could be lost in 2014-15.

Could this revive the dormant, some would say dead, USAC-Great South merger talks? Absolutely. The USA South’s Maryville is already an associate member of the league in football and could join for all sports, as could Piedmont and LaGrange. Piedmont is the closest school of the southern portion of the GSAC to the USAC footprint.

If the southern flank of the USA South opens up, might Christopher Newport be the next to leave? The Captains would be the next geographic outlier in this group and, in my opinion, are a good fit for the Capital Athletic Conference. They would also bring a football program that could put the CAC on the verge of being a football conference. Stevenson adds football in 2012, while Salisbury, Frostburg and Wesley already have the sport. Five football programs isn’t seven, but it’s in the ballpark and who knows, Pool B might not be so bad a place to be for a while in football.

Plus, remember the women’s programs in the USA South and the Great South vastly outnumber the men’s. They could well spin off and form their own conference which would be eligible for an automatic bid as well. That group could draw from the following schools: Agnes Scott, Mary Baldwin, Meredith, Peace, Salem, Spelman, Wesleyan (Ga.). They might find that type of affiliation more to their liking.

The MAC had to be considered a strong contender to land Shenandoah. The conference already is home to a handful of Shenandoah’s sports: field hockey and men’s and women’s indoor track and track and field. The conference added Stevenson as an affiliate member for football and Shenandoah would have made it 10 in that sport. But the MAC missed out.

Touring another old gymnasium

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DE PERE, Wis. — I got to see another old gym tonight. I’m at St. Norbert this weekend to see the Green Knights open a new football stadium against No. 5 St. Thomas and got the tour of campus from sports information director Dan Lukes.

When we drove by a particular building, Dan mentioned that it used to be the gym, and I asked if we could get out and see it. We couldn’t get in the gym itself, but it is indeed still a gymnasium. This being September, there were volleyball nets up. There are glass backboards, with “No Dunking Allowed” on the bottom of the glass.

The playing floor is just 77 feet long — just long enough to make a Grinnell game even more of a breakneck speed. If you have ever been in the old gym at Mount St. Mary’s, yes, the Division I school in Emmitsburg, Md., this looks exactly like it. It has a big wall with windows on the end — in this case, facing the Fox River instead of U.S. 15, a high vaulted ceiling, and was built in the 1930s. I could almost picture Jim Phelan stalking the sidelines in a bow tie, although in this case, I was told that Dick Bennett coached in the last game St. Norbert played in the gym, for UW-Stevens Point.

I’ve written about my fascination with old gymnasiums before. Since then, I’ve added the old gym at Wash U to my list (it’s connected to the new gym), as well as the old gym at Stevens. I think Randolph-Macon may be my favorite, however.