Seattle U becoming a member of West Coast Convention, will go away WAC behind TERMAN WEBSITE

Seattle College is returning to the West Coast Convention starting within the 2025-26 athletic yr, the place it’s going to be a part of Gonzaga, and for at the very least one season, Washington State and Oregon State.

The convention introduced Friday morning that it was including Seattle College and Grand Canyon.

The Redhawks, who’ve been members of the Western Athletic Convention since 2012, have been members of the WCC till 1981, when Seattle U pulled out of Division I sports activities.

“After we rejoined Division I athletics (in 2010), we did that with the hope and expectation to have the ability to rejoin the West Coast Convention,” stated Seattle College president Eduardo Peñalver. “In the present day is the end result of that effort. It’s such an excellent match for Seattle College geographically, clearly, but in addition when it comes to the mission and nature of the colleges that make up the West Coast Convention.”

West Coast Convention commissioner Stu Jackson stated it was “a fully nice day for the WCC so as to add Grand Canyon College and Seattle College.”

“It additional positions the WCC as one of many premier Division I conferences within the nation,” he stated. “Including members like Grand Canyon and Seattle has been a spotlight of our convention. … Grand Canyon and Seattle will additional stabilize our convention from a membership standpoint for the foreseeable future. And it additionally will enhance our competitiveness as a convention and lift it to a good additional degree of excellence.”

Males’s basketball is well the game with probably the most publicity within the West Coast Convention. Gonzaga has been one of many nation’s prime applications for many years, and Saint Mary’s has been the most effective groups on the West Coast for years.

Redhawks males’s basketball coach Chris Victor received the information Friday morning that quickly his group would have the problem of repeatedly competing in opposition to these groups.

“We’ll have the ability to recruit just a little in a different way,” Victor stated. “Having the ability to recruit to the WCC and what the WCC has carried out — the success of the applications, being a multibid convention and the quantity of NBA gamers which were produced by WCC — is one thing we can make the most of for certain.”

The Redhawks will probably be reunited with fellow West Coast Jesuit and Catholic universities, together with San Francisco, Loyola Marymount, Saint Mary’s, Portland, Gonzaga and Santa Clara.

“We’re actually delighted to be rejoining our all of our sister Jesuit universities on the West Coast within the West Coast Convention and a variety of different Catholic establishments within the convention,” Peñalver stated. “The lineup of sports activities is an ideal match for us. It’s going to be an excellent factor for our student-athletes, and an excellent transition for followers and alumni in Seattle, and elsewhere on the West Coast.”

The 2 new additions will give the WCC 11 full members starting in 2025-26. Oregon State and Washington State will compete as affiliate members in 12 sports activities for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons.

Washington State and Oregon State’s settlement with the WCC expires after the 2025-26 season, so there isn’t a assurance these universities would proceed competing within the WCC, which doesn’t have soccer.

Jackson stated WSU and Oregon State will most likely have their soccer scenario found out in two years, “and almost certainly take lots of their Olympic sports activities with them.”

“That being stated, we don’t know what the longer term holds,” Jackson stated. “We have been right here with open arms and we’ll stay with open arms ought to they determine that retaining their sports activities with the WCC is the place they wish to be.”

With or with out Washington State and Oregon State, the WCC has star energy and title recognition. That ought to assist create extra curiosity in Seattle U athletics.

“It’s going to be enormous,” Peñalver stated. “All the West Coast Convention faculties have important alumni populations within the Seattle space.”

Stated Seattle College athletic director Shaney Fink: “There’s such continuity between the applications and the power goes to be nice.”

Victor, whose group gained the Faculty Basketball Invitational final season, is aware of the problem forward for his group, however he stated this system has been headed in the fitting course for some time.

The Seattle U males have gained at the very least 20 video games in every of the previous three seasons and completed within the prime half of the WAC standings every of these seasons, together with sharing a convention title in 2021-22.

Whereas the WAC doesn’t have a program wherever close to the magnitude of Gonzaga, it has been significantly better than many may assume, ending properly inside the highest half of the nation’s 33 Division I conferences the previous three seasons, and only a few spots behind the WCC.

However will probably be simpler for Seattle College to attract consideration when it’s enjoying groups comparable to Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and Washington State than enjoying groups like Tarleton State, Abilene Christian and Texas Rio Grande Valley.

“There will probably be much more recognizable applications and names,” Victor stated. “These applications will probably be coming to Seattle to play, so followers will probably be excited. The alumni are actually enthusiastic about that as properly.”

Seattle College can even get extra tv publicity. The convention has a media-rights deal by which ESPN broadcasts 17 males’s basketball regular-season video games and 6 WCC males’s and ladies’s match video games. As a part of the deal,
CBS Sports activities Community can televise as much as 12 regular-season males’s basketball video games every season.

Jackson, the convention commissioner, stated including Seattle U to the WCC has particular that means for him.

After enjoying three seasons of faculty basketball at Oregon, Jackson transferred to Seattle College after sustaining an damage and saying he wished to give attention to teachers.

He averaged 12 factors per sport as senior at Seattle U in 1977-78 and earned his diploma in enterprise administration.

“It was a spot in a tradition that was nourishing from an educational standpoint, and fairly frankly, I thrived there throughout my one and a half years in Seattle,” stated Jackson, who coached males’s basketball at Wisconsin earlier than later working within the NBA as a coach and government. “So yeah, it does have some that means to me.”