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| For Maryville, the new league will look a lot like the old league that it used to be in: the Great South Athletic Conference. Photo by Larry Radloff, d3photography.com |
By Pat Coleman and Dave McHugh
D3sports.com
Sources tell D3sports.com and Hoopsville that the USA South Athletic Conference is splitting into two conferences. With 19 member schools, the USA South is the largest conference in the NCAA, in all divisions.
This was published as a breaking news story on Feb. 16, 2022. The conference confirmed with its release on Feb. 18.
The nine schools splitting into a new conference are generally the southernmost and westernmost of the existing conference membership and resemble the makeup of the old Great South Athletic Conference, a smaller group which disbanded for men's sports after the 2011-12 academic year, and disbanded altogether after the 2015-16 season.
The membership of the new group, the CCS, are Agnes Scott, Belhaven, Berea, Covenant, Huntingdon, LaGrange, Maryville, Piedmont and Wesleyan (Ga.). Wesleyan and Agnes Scott are women-only instutitions. Of this group, all but Belhaven and Berea were members of the GSAC.
"Our decision to build and split the USA South into two strong conferences has been strategic and collegial at every turn," shared Dr. Jo Allen, Meredith College president and chair of the USA South Presidents Council. "We have carefully and thoughtfully planned to build these two conferences as exemplary of our collective commitment to student-athletes and their experience as both students and athletes."
"We are grateful to our USA South colleagues for the productive and collegial manner in which this separation has been approached, and we are immensely excited about the possibilities which lay ahead for the new Collegiate Conference of the South," Maryville president Dr. Bryan Coker said. "In addition, we are thrilled that the NCAA has supported our application for membership as we move toward full competition in the fall of 2022."
"With the increasing interest and growth of Division III in the South, it only makes sense to begin sorting out conference alignment by prioritizing geographic considerations," stated Dr. Tom Hart, USA South Commissioner. "We are excited to continue our relationship with select institutions of the CCS in a few sports and wish the remaining members well on this new endeavor."
The new conference will start play immediately in the fall of 2022. Its members will not qualify for automatic bids until the fall of 2024, but once the CCS does, that would make 45 all-sports conferences receiving automatic bids to NCAA Tournaments such as those for men's and women's basketball.
Even split into two, the footprint of the new conference, the Collegiate Conference of the South, is gigantic. It is 624 miles from Berea, in Kentucky, to Belhaven, in Jackson, Mississippi. Belhaven announced in November that it was joining the USA South in the fall of 2022, but will in fact be joining the new conference.
This move will not add a new automatic bid in football, a sport which is already stressed by a large number of automatic bids. Four members of the new conference sponsor football, and five of the remaining USA South members sponsor football.
Schools sponsoring football, men's lacrosse, women's lacrosse and women's golf will continue to play those sports as affiliates in the USA South, and no interruption is expected in automatic bids in those sports. The USA South will retain the following schools: Brevard, Greensboro, Mary Baldwin, Methodist, N.C. Wesleyan, Pfeiffer, Salem, Southern Virginia and William Peace, with Meredith and Salem women-only institutions.
Averett, also currently a member of the USA South, joins the Old Dominion Athletic Conference in the fall.