Dr. Paul Conn, chair of the Southern States Athletic Conference Board of Presidents, announced today that the conference has agreed to expand its membership and restructure its conference play to become effective for the 2010-11 academic year. Joining the SSAC along with the Crusaders are fellow GCAC members Belhaven College, Loyola University New Orleans, Spring Hill College, and the  University of Mobile. These institutions join recently announced Truett-McConnell College in increasing the SSAC membership to 16. The quality of these new institutions, the numerous sports they sponsor and their past regional and national successes, are strong indicators of the Southern States' commitment to being a premier NAIA conference in the country.

President Conn expressed, "It is a genuine pleasure to welcome these five fine institutions to our conference. Each provides top-quality education to students, and each is committed to the student-athlete as a part of the total educational enterprise. These are schools that understand the priority of academic life for student athletes. They will be a great fit for our conference."

A main reason the switch will be made, said Carey athletic director Steve Knight, is so Carey teams will have an uncomplicated and less expensive chance of advancing to the NAIA playoffs in their respective sports.

"It all started two years ago when the NAIA did away with regions," Knight said. "Your qualification plan to national tournaments was through your conference. In order to get an automatic bid to the NAIA playoffs, a conference had to have at least six teams playing that sport. The Gulf Coast Athletic Conference fell short of that in several sports.

"We began looking for an option that would guarantee that our sports would play in the postseason. Out of those talks, we were approached and pursued pretty heavily by the Southern States Athletic Conference because they were in the same situation."

This new membership allows the SSAC to restructure its conference into two divisions. Belhaven, Loyola, Spring Hill, Mobile, and William Carey will join Auburn University Montgomery and Faulkner University to make up the Western division. The remaining Southern States schools along with Truett-McConnell will make up the Eastern division. Each team will play their regular season conference games within their division with season-ending championships in each sport bringing together qualifying teams from both divisions.

One advantage to the expansion is that it increases championship opportunities in 13 sports and ensures automatic qualifiers for each. There will be enough teams competing that each sport in Southern States competition will have at least one automatic bid to the NAIA national tournament and multiple bids in most team sports.

SSAC Commissioner Kurt Patberg agreed with Conn about the quality of these institutions and discussed other major benefits of this 16-member, two-divisional version of the conference. "We have been able to create unique divisional-play opportunities, generate a conference membership that, combined, should elevate the exposure of our institutions regionally and nationally through sports competition and increased marketing opportunities. Furthermore, this expansion enhances the quality of our 13 championships. Exciting times for the Southern States are on the horizon, with signs pointing toward great future success for our league," Patberg said.

Before it joined the GCAC, Carey belonged to the Southern States Conference with Auburn-Montgomery, Spring Hill, Belhaven, Alabama-Huntsville and Athens State. That conference was the origin of the current Southern States Athletic Conference.

Southern States Athletic Conference
West Division
William Carey
Belhaven
Loyola
Spring Hill
Mobile
Auburn-Montgomery
Faulkner

 

East Division
Truett-McConnell
Berry
Brewton-Parker
Columbia
Emmanuel
Lee
Shorter
Southern Polytechnic
Southern Wesleyan
Brenau (women only)