Conference changes

[Gregory Sager]

I think in this era, it may sound crazy but private schools in general with under $50M in endowment should see cautionary signs.  Money doesn't go as far as it once did and the explosion in administrative staff combined with flat or falling enrollment puts institutions on the brink.

It strikes me as especially strange in this era of computers, automation, and AI, that it takes more non-teaching staff than before all of this existed.  I'm not naive about institutional hiring, but trustees would have to explain to me how it is in the school's interest to close doors permanently instead of righting the ship when bells and whistles were sounding.

Alverno has canceled all or part of the seasons of multiple Inferno sports over the past couple of years because of insufficiently-sized rosters. There's your "cautionary sign" right there. Soccer was canceled completely this past fall because the Inferno was down to only six players on the roster. Then basketball packed it in for 2026-27 because there were only two players. This spring Alverno canceled its track & field season, and also canceled all of its non-conference softball games shortly after the season started, due to the fact that there's only 11 players and the softball coach wants to make sure that he can keep the team intact for NACC play.

North Park's softball team was one of the non-conference Alverno foes that saw those two games dropped from the schedule too late for the Vikings head coach to secure an alternate opponent for 2026. When I asked if NPU would consider rescheduling Alverno in the future (since I have misgivings about having to call softball games with scores like 23-0 or 21-1, even if the Vikings are the team winning such a blowout), the reply was, "Alverno has no future."

It seems like a legit diagnosis. The widespread evidence that Inferno athletics has fallen apart do appear to be a symptom of the institution's terminal illness. I hate to see it happen, just as I hated to see Trinity Christian College -- the local NAIA school whose imminent closure caused NPU's softball coach to have to resort to playing Alverno as a late replacement in the first place -- announce that it was shutting its doors. My heart goes out to all of the people -- students, faculty, staff, alumni(ae) -- who have to suffer through the loss of their school.