The Bryn Athyn men's basketball team won the United East Conference and made the Division III NCAA Tournament earlier this month. Bryn Athyn athletics photo

D3sports.com has learned that Bryn Athyn, a small college outside of Philadelphia, is dropping all athletics at the end of the 2024-25 academic year. The official announcement came Wednesday evening.

Bryn Athyn, a college of The New Church, reported just 255 full-time undergraduate students in its most recent report to the U.S. Department of Education. Of those, 136, or 53%, were student-athletes.

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The school has 11 NCAA Division III sports teams, competing in the United East Conference, which is in its current form because the former North Eastern Athletic Conference merged with the Colonial States Athletic Conference. The UEC was formed in this alignment specifically to guard against individual member institutions closing, or in this case, choosing to cease athletics participation.

Bryn Athyn first fielded an intercollegiate athletic team in 1967, when it started a men's lacrosse team, according to a history of Bryn Athyn athletics written by Fredrik Bryntesson and published on the school's website less than six months ago. The school has been a member of NCAA Division III for a decade and added a sport as recently as 2021-22, when its men's volleyball team started.

Sean Connelly, the president of Bryn Athyn, cited the ability to save the equivalent of 11 full-time jobs, all in athletics, in making the decision. It notes that the college outspends its peers in athletics spending as a percentage of school budget, although almost no Division III schools have a similar small size to make a valid comparison.