Go WEST young man (and NORTH)

[Kuiper]

Chapman wins 1-0 with 43 seconds left in double overtime on a bicycle kick volley to the corner of the goal off a free kick.  That's about as exciting (and heart breaking for Oxy) as a game can end.

[Kuiper]

Whittier College of the SCIAC announced it is cutting men's football, men's lacrosse, and men's and women's golf.  There are a lot of good reasons to cut football for a small college (Oxy did it two years ago), some of which apply to lacrosse (e.g., head injury risk), but none of which apply to golf.  They don't mention cutting any other sports and soccer appears safe, but I suspect this is a warning of financial distress.  It's never a good sign when they start talking about spending more on programs that benefit all students, like yoga and dance class (which just HAPPEN to be a ton cheaper), especially since they don't really attract students to your school because virtually all schools already offer them since they are so cheap.

https://www.whittier.edu/news/tue-11152022-340-pm/whittier-college-makes-changes-poet-athletics

"Nearly one-third of our current students are athletes and Whittier remains committed to supporting Poet Athletics and the 18 intercollegiate varsity sports in which our student-athletes will continue to compete. There are no plans to discontinue additional athletic programs at the College.

Going forward, Whittier will expand its commitment to health, wellness, and recreation. We are reinvesting our resources and efforts in programs that will impact even more of our students. We are also looking to the future—we have an active eSports team, dance activities, weekly yoga classes, and more on campus. We will continue to be open to other innovative developments that meet our students' needs."

DIII soccer is sufficiently precarious already in Southern California that I'm sure the other SCIAC members are going to be monitoring this closely.

[Kuiper]

I don't think this makes any sense for most sports, like Men's soccer, that do have enough teams for two separate conferences "(and two separate NCAA AQs), but it looks like the Linfield University president raised the idea of a NWC/SCIAC merger in a twitter reply he posted in the wake of the news about Whittier terminating it's football program.

https://twitter.com/DrDtweeters/status/1592615124921356288?s=20&t=_-n5RifNDETY5fA8OF8M4A

[Kuiper]

Taty Aleman of St. Thomas named a first team All-American by United Soccer Coaches.  20 goals and 5 assists in 21 games will do that for you.

https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/2022-united-soccer-coaches-ncaa-division-iii-mens-and-womens-all-america-teams-announced/

Three other Region X players were named third team All-Americans

Nick Villaneueva - Mary Hardin-Baylor
Daniel Castro - St. Thomas
Luis Green - Texas Lutheran

[Kuiper]

It's too big a territory for me to keep track of all DIII commitments in the west and north, but here are a few:

Dylan Stapley, a 6'2" MLS Next defender for Albion in San Diego, committed to Colorado College

Aaron Gonzalez, a defender for Houston Dynamo Youth, committed to Centenary (LA)

Alexander Mutalibov, a midfielder for Houston Dynamo Youth, committed to University of Texas, Dallas

Cole Pettit, a midfielder from Bavarian United SC in Wisconsin, committed to North Central College

[Kuiper]

It looks like the massive geographic conference shifts aren't limited to the D1 conferences.  The SAA announces that Trinity TX and Southwestern will be joining them in all sports.

https://saa-sports.com/news/2023/3/9/general-saa-welcomes-southwestern-university-and-trinity-university-texas-as-full-time-members.aspx

[Ron Boerger]

It looks like the massive geographic conference shifts aren't limited to the D1 conferences.  The SAA announces that Trinity TX and Southwestern will be joining them in all sports.

https://saa-sports.com/news/2023/3/9/general-saa-welcomes-southwestern-university-and-trinity-university-texas-as-full-time-members.aspx

It was exactly a decade ago (2012-13 season) that the SAA played its first season after splitting from the SCAC.  Trinity and Southwestern, two of three SCAC schools with similar academic profiles to schools in the SAA (Colorado College is the third) are coming home.  Both have enough money to cover the substantial increase in travel costs - with the possible exception of Hendrix in football all weekend travel will have to be flights (as it will for the current SAA schools coming to Texas, but that should be an every other year thing, reducing the impact on them). 

[Kuiper]

It looks like the massive geographic conference shifts aren't limited to the D1 conferences.  The SAA announces that Trinity TX and Southwestern will be joining them in all sports.

https://saa-sports.com/news/2023/3/9/general-saa-welcomes-southwestern-university-and-trinity-university-texas-as-full-time-members.aspx

It was exactly a decade ago (2012-13 season) that the SAA played its first season after splitting from the SCAC.  Trinity and Southwestern, two of three SCAC schools with similar academic profiles to schools in the SAA (Colorado College is the third) are coming home.  Both have enough money to cover the substantial increase in travel costs - with the possible exception of Hendrix in football all weekend travel will have to be flights (as it will for the current SAA schools coming to Texas, but that should be an every other year thing, reducing the impact on them).

I was just thinking that Colorado College is the loser in this move, but they don't have a lot of options.  They would fit in well academically with schools like Pomona-Pitzer, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, and Occidental in the SCIAC, but I doubt that the SCIAC schools would have any interest in that kind of travel.  One benefit to Trinity/Southwestern moving to the SAA is their trips can be two game weekends, whereas the Colorado Springs trips were generally one-offs.

This column provides some background on the move from the Texas football side of things, since Trinity has been a football affiliate since 2017 and Southwestern was planning to join SAA as a football affiliate in 2023

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2023/03/09/trinity-and-southwestern-to-move-all-sports-to-the-saa?ref=article_preview_title

The implication from the SAA side of things is that the conference is worried that Birmingham Southern, which has gone to the state to seek a $30m bailout, may have to close up shop

https://www.wbrc.com/2023/02/10/birmingham-southern-college-future-still-up-air/

As a professor of sports management at another SCAC school tweeted about this, the students are the big losers in this (and what makes it seem comparable to what is going on with UCLA/USC leaving the Pac 12 for the Big 10) since the travel for Trinity/Southwestern students is going to increase quite a bit, even without the Colorado College trips:

Mark L. Howard, PhD
@sptfinphd
·
1h
Replying to
@sptfinphd

@TingleJK
and 2 others
Current mileage on average in @SCAC_Sports
is 286 miles. Future mileage in @SAA_Sports
is 869 miles. So just over 3 times as much on average. Students will be missing a lot more class, even if they are flying.

[Ron Boerger]

CC is in a tough situation to be sure.  For about a year they actually had a travel partner, Johnson and Wales - Denver, who went belly up less than two years after starting play in the SCAC.

[EnmoreCat]

Having visited Southwestern as part of a visit with Trinity in 2018, I can say with confidence that it will be a challenging away trip.  We were there on a very warm Texas day and the humidity was something else.

[Ron Boerger]

The prof above (Mark L. Howard, PhD) is from Schreiner - and also posted to @SCAC_Sports "what does this mean for [SCAC] football", so take his comments with just a grain of salt.  He also made this statement:  "I would think there might be some hard feelings from the remaining @SCAC_Sports schools. Since those schools agreed to become football schools to appease Trinity and now they are ditching the conference."

This isn't Trinity or Southwestern's first rodeo; they were members of the SCAC for a couple of decades and are very familiar with the travel required.  And a lot of the kids that go to those schools like this kind of travel.

[Kuiper]

Whittier College of the SCIAC announced it is cutting men's football, men's lacrosse, and men's and women's golf.  There are a lot of good reasons to cut football for a small college (Oxy did it two years ago), some of which apply to lacrosse (e.g., head injury risk), but none of which apply to golf.  They don't mention cutting any other sports and soccer appears safe, but I suspect this is a warning of financial distress.  It's never a good sign when they start talking about spending more on programs that benefit all students, like yoga and dance class (which just HAPPEN to be a ton cheaper), especially since they don't really attract students to your school because virtually all schools already offer them since they are so cheap.

https://www.whittier.edu/news/tue-11152022-340-pm/whittier-college-makes-changes-poet-athletics

"Nearly one-third of our current students are athletes and Whittier remains committed to supporting Poet Athletics and the 18 intercollegiate varsity sports in which our student-athletes will continue to compete. There are no plans to discontinue additional athletic programs at the College.

Going forward, Whittier will expand its commitment to health, wellness, and recreation. We are reinvesting our resources and efforts in programs that will impact even more of our students. We are also looking to the future—we have an active eSports team, dance activities, weekly yoga classes, and more on campus. We will continue to be open to other innovative developments that meet our students' needs."

DIII soccer is sufficiently precarious already in Southern California that I'm sure the other SCIAC members are going to be monitoring this closely.

Another story about Whittier College, but this time about whether the school as a whole will survive.  As I said previously, that would not be good for the SCIAC, which doesn't have other D3 options in the area (although UC Santa Cruz or Colorado College would probably love to join if the current schools were willing to incur the travel costs)

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1641465307624620033?s=46&t=uXiupHZfR0TxrRyWF9BmRg

[Kuiper]

Not much recruiting news from the SCIAC, but Redlands just posted a couple of commitments: 

Defender Ben Evans from Bend FC Timbers in Oregon and local product ECNL forward Taylor Bell from Sporting California Arsenal FC, who is the younger brother of Redlands midfielder Cody Bell

[Kuiper]

Not much recruiting news from the SCIAC, but Redlands just posted a couple of commitments: 

Defender Ben Evans from Bend FC Timbers in Oregon and local product ECNL forward Taylor Bell from Sporting California Arsenal FC, who is the younger brother of Redlands midfielder Cody Bell

Redlands announced a third signing:  Anders Beckton a forward from Seattle United B05 ECNL

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrLxjvjrjIG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

[Kuiper]

Chapman, which won the SCIAC last year, played two shortened spring games yesterday against local community colleges (which can actually provide very serious competition in SoCal).  They tied Mira Costa CC 1-1 and beat Santa Ana College 3-2.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrXVEZArZP3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

You can't tell too much from these spring scrimmages given that coaches often want to try things out and give players a chance, but still a good sign for a team that is losing some important players, including their starting GK from last year.

There are different philosophies on types of opponents to play too.

Redlands played @ D1 Cal State Northridge a few weeks ago, Pomona-Pitzer hosted D2 Cal State San Marcos and CC Cerritos College, and Occidental played D2 Azusa Pacific and a UPSL adult team (primarily former college players with a mix of D1 and others).