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| D3sports.com photo illustration |
By Pat Coleman and Dave McHugh,
D3sports.com
Division III sports is done at Wesley effective the end of this academic year, D3sports.com has learned. As a result of the school’s acquisition by Delaware State University, which is just over a mile and a half away from Wesley’s campus in Dover, Delaware, athletics personnel at Wesley have been notified that the Division III programs will be shut down at the end of the 2021 spring season.
Wesley, an all-sports member of the Atlantic East Conference and a football member of the New Jersey Athletic Conference, is the only Division III school in the state of Delaware.
At the time of this writing, it was unclear which, if any, of Wesley’s 19 intercollegiate sports might be able to take the field or the floor between now and the end of the school year. The Atlantic East has not announced formal basketball schedules and the NJAC has yet to announce plans one way or the other for spring football competition. Wesley does not have schedules posted for baseball or softball, or for men’s or women’s lacrosse.
"With how unique Wesley College has come to be known as, with sports being the brand and flag bearer for Wesley, I feel bad for the student-athletes,” said Dean Burrows, the school’s men’s basketball coach. “I can only hope the athletes can land on their feet and continue to do what they love to do.”
The acquisition announcement was originally made on July 9, 2020. Delaware State is an HBCU institution that competes in NCAA Division I and sponsors football on the Division I FCS level. Officials said that the operation of the Wesley campus would continue to be operated “as we have been in the past” for the 2020-21 academic year.
One model which had Wesley officials holding out hope for the athletic department being retained was how Fairleigh Dickinson University operates. The institution has one Division I campus, in Teaneck, New Jersey, and a Division III campus, FDU-Florham, in Madison, New Jersey. But those campuses are 33 miles apart.
A financially stressed institution, Wesley had required financial assistance from the state of Delaware in order to remain open.
The school reported a total of 1,129 full-time undergraduates to the U.S. Department of Education in its most recent filing, as of the 2018-19 academic year. Of that total, 32% were student-athletes, some of whom played multiple sports.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, MacMurray College has closed its doors, Pine Manor has been taken over by Boston College, and Johnson & Wales-Denver has shut down its athletics program after the school announced it was winding down operation of its Denver campus.
Wesley has been a national prominent program in Division III football over the past two decades, including a stretch in which the program won at least one playoff game for 13 consecutive years. The program played in the national semifinals six times from 2005 to 2014 under the late Mike Drass, the program’s longtime coach and the school’s athletic director, who died suddenly of a heart attack in May 2018.
Although no official schedules have been released for sports this spring, Wesley does appear on the schedule of conference rivals in sports such as men’s soccer and men’s and women’s lacrosse, as well as men’s and women’s basketball.
The closure of the institution will leave the AEC with just six members effective next fall. Without a new member or a change in the way NCAA Division III members receive automatic bids, the AEC will lose its automatic bids effective the fall of 2023. The NJAC will still have seven football members.