Posted on: Friday, April 25, 2003

PacWest ADs expected to decide on adding sport

By Brandon Masuoka
Advertiser Staff Writer

The six schools that constitute the Pacific West Conference today will decide whether to add a sport to meet an NCAA requirement for the 2004-05 season.

The athletic directors and presidents of the conference — composed of Brigham Young-Hawai'i, Chaminade, Hawai'i-Hilo, Hawai'i Pacific, Montana State-Billings and Western New Mexico — will meet today in La'ie to discuss the requirement, said BYUH athletic director Randy Day.

A new NCAA rule requires each Division II school in the Pacific West Conference to field 10 conference sports for the 2004-05 season to receive voting privileges and NCAA money.

The intent of the rule was to have high standards for a school that desired entry into the NCAA from the NAIA, Day said.

"It was to make sure (the NAIA schools) were committed to a certain standard," Day said. "The intent was never to hurt NCAA schools that were already there, nor was the intent to try to penalize any particular conference."

Day said the rule penalizes the PacWest because of the relatively small composition of the conference and burdens schools with fiscal and travel problems.

Currently, each PacWest school has seven conference sports with three men's sports (basketball, tennis and cross country) and four women's sports (softball, tennis, volleyball and cross country).

Each school also has different non-conference sports such as baseball (HPU, UH-Hilo), men's water polo (Chaminade, BYUH), football (Western New Mexico) and women's basketball (Montana State-Billings).

A likely addition of men's and women's golf will boost the number of conference sports to nine. The 10th conference sport is still being debated.