Over the past five years, the college sports landscape has changed at a hyper-accelerated pace. From COVID challenges to the evolution of Name-Image-Likeness opportunities, the NCAA is almost unrecognizable from what it was just a few years ago.
It can be argued that the biggest change in the NCAA during the last five years hasn’t been related to the pandemic or NIL, however, but rather the seemingly nonstop realignment of conferences.
In 2019, the NEC looked a lot different. Five of the full-time members of the league at that time are gone and one of the original members of the conference (Saint Francis-NY) eliminated its NCAA athletics program entirely in 2023. The NEC had 10 full-time members in 2019; today the league includes nine schools.
“It’s been a challenge for a variety of aspects,” said SFU Director of Athletics James Downer, who has served in this role since 2020. “During my tenure, there has been a general lack of predictability and stability within the NEC.
“To the NEC’s credit, they have replaced the losses (of member schools) with new members, but the geographic footprint of the NEC has expanded as a result.”
The latest schools to join the league are Chicago State Mercyhurst. The distance between SFU and CSU is 532 miles. Mercyhurst is located in Erie, Pennsylvania and is the closest current member school to Loretto (185 miles).
“I do believe that realignment has weakened the overall strength of the NEC from where it stood five years ago,” said Downer, “but I remain optimistic that the new membership will bring more stability to the NEC.”
Another of the more recent additions to the conference is Le Moyne College, which accepted an invitation to the league in May of 2023.
“It’s exciting, but also different,” said redshirt sophomore Elena Arnold, a member of the Red Flash women’s volleyball team. “I’m particularly excited about playing Chicago State because they were already in Division I.”
Mercyhurst and Le Moyne both competed at the Division II level before joining the NEC.
