Baseball in Israel

Recent Oberlin graduate, Seth Binder, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, is one of 120 players from eight countries jump-starting a professional baseball league in Israel.

The six-team Israel Baseball League threw out the first pitch last Sunday. About 60 percent of the league is American, with other players coming from Israel, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Australia, Columbia, Japan and Ukraine.

Binder, a shortstop at Oberlin, graduated in May. He hit .333 over his senior season and was twice named to the All-NCAC team. He is a member of the Petach Tikva Pioneers, who are off to a 0-2 start.

Follow the story:
Israel Baseball League
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Oberlin Web Site
The Jerusalem Post

2006-07 Wrap-up

The final awards and honors of the 2007-08 year have come in. 2006-07 was very successful for the NCAC.

In total, 44 teams from all 22 North Coast sports, and all 10 NCAC schools, were represented in NCAA post-season competition during the 2006-07 academic year. The NCAC added two Division III championships as Kenyon won men's and women's swimming, bringing our 23-year total of national championships to 55. We had three other teams reach the national semifinals of their respective NCAA Tournaments: Ohio Wesleyan men's soccer, Wittenberg volleyball and Wooster men's basketball. In addition, 179 student-athletes from around the conference earned All-America and/or Academic All-America honors.

Now it's time to look ahead to the 2007-08 season. If you can believe it, preseason awards are starting to be announced in football and other fall sports. We can't wait to see what the new year brings!

Postgraduate Scholarship Winners

Congratulations to the latest NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship honoree from the NCAC - Sheldon Steiner, a baseball player from Wooster!

Overall, seven student-athletes from NCAC schools earned the prestigious honor over the 2006-07 academic year. In addition to Sheldon, the recipients were:

Elaine Binkley, Denison (cross country)
Anne Young, Denison (women's soccer)
Ben Chojnacki, Ohio Wesleyan (men's basketball)
Josh Warren, Ohio Wesleyan (men's soccer)
Patrick Millikan, Wabash (football)
John Drushal, Wooster (football)

Having just completed its 23rd season of competition, the Conference has seen 115 scholarships go to student-athletes from nine schools in 16 different sports. Overall, Kenyon entered the 2006-07 academic year second in all Division III institutions with 50 honorees since the inception of the NCAA program in 1965, followed by Denison (40-now 42) in third. Wabash (14-now 15) entered the season in a tie for 24th, while Allegheny (10) sits in a tie for 42nd.

The NCAA annually awards 174 postgraduate scholarships, 87 for men, 87 for women, in the amount of $7,500 to student-athletes who have excelled academically and athletically and are in their final year of intercollegiate athletics competition.

Each sports season (fall, winter and spring), there are 29 scholarships available for men and 29 scholarships available for women. The scholarships are one-time, non-renewable grants. Nominees must maintain at least a 3.200 grade-point average and perform with distinction in varsity competition. The student-athlete must also intend to continue academic work beyond the baccalaureate degree as a part-time or full-time graduate student.

Rankings Methods Scrutinized

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an article last week regarding the the annual U.S. News & World Report's college rankings.

At a recent meeting of the Annapolis Group, an organization of the leading national independent liberal arts colleges, the college leaders discussed the rankings and decided to stop participating in one particular factor: the part of the survey in which they assess each other's reputations. This portion of the survey represents 25 percent of a school's score in the rankings, according to Bloomberg News.

The presidents are planning to help develop another way help prospective students and their families determine the best school for their individual needs.

Presidents Dale Knobel of Denison, Tom Chema of Hiram and Georgia Nugent of Kenyon were all quoted in the article. Oberlin and Wooster were also mentioned. Click here for the full article.

Wabash Director of Public Affairs and Marketing, Jim Amidon, also weighed in on this issue in his weekly column in the Journal Review.

This is not the first time the U.S. News & World Report's survey has come under NCAC scrutiny. In 2003, Conference presidents voted to decline requests from the magazine for detailed statistical information about their institutions’ athletic programs. The presidents felt that a ranking of athletic programs would unnaturally distill athletics from the greater experience offered by each of our colleges.

Celebrating Title IX

Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of Title IX, the first federal law requiring educational institutions that receive federal funds to provide equal academic and athletic opportunities for both men and women.

In 1972, there were approximately 30,000 female student-athletes participating in sports; today, more than 170,000 NCAA female student-athletes participate in sports and nearly 3 million girls are participating in high school athletics - an increase of over 900 percent since Title IX became law. Click for more information from the NCAA News.

One of the founding principles of the NCAC was equality for women. We currently offer 22 sports: 11 for men and 11 for women. Here's an excerpt from a review of Conference history written in 2003 for the 20th Anniversary season:

The fall of 1984 launched the first playing season for the new experiment called the North Coast Athletic Conference, a new playing conference in the NCAA’s Division III.

The Conference’s new principles and goals were revolutionary in the conservative world of college athletics at the time. As we mark the NCAC’s 20th Year of operation, the Conference, with its strong commitment to equity and excellence, has been a model to change the face of college athletics at all levels in the NCAA. That leadership in the early 1980s has also trickled down and changed the face of sports programs at the high school level.

Most prominent was the NCAC’s stance, written into the preamble of its constitution, that women’s sports would have equity with men’s sports. Except for a few conferences that had just added women’s sports (like the Big Ten in 1983), the NCAC was the first to state that this was a key goal of operation. Hard to believe today, but in 1984, most every conference was setup for men’s college sports only—and then, just for football and men’s basketball. NCAC members withdrew from conferences that resisted adding women’s sports.

“Marquee sports, major and minor sports, revenue-producing sports—all were catchphrases of the early 1980s,” says Dennis Collins, the NCAC’s only Executive Director, now in his 20th season at the NCAC helm. “The environment was not only completely different than today, it was openly hostile to women’s sports and every sport other than football and men’s basketball.”

“ The results of our early positions have resulted in acceptance of women’s sports and contributed to the media coverage of all sports,” states Baird Tipson, President of Wittenberg University and the current president of the NCAC.

NCAC founders decided that women’s sports and all sports were important to their colleges and stated so in their new constitution (there are now 22 NCAC sports). As a result, the NCAC emphasized all sports, including swimming, soccer, field hockey, and volleyball, in addition to football and men’s basketball. This also was wildly revolutionary. One of the major results of these decisions was that coaching staffs had to be increased, fields and facilities expanded and the overall budgets of NCAC colleges jumped dramatically. These proactive positions were well ahead of the punitive nature of the Title IX debate, which came in the later 1980s.

Champions at the White House

On Monday, June 18, 20 Division I national championship teams met with President George W. Bush at the White House. The NCAA Blog, the Double-A Zone, has a post about the visit and discusses how it would be nice if NCAA champions from Div. II and III institutions would have been included.

There has been at least one NCAA Division III team to visit the White House after winning a championship: the 1987-88 Ohio Wesleyan Men's Basketball Team.

The Battling Bishops claimed the 1988 Div. III championship in men's basketball with a 92-70 win over two-time champion Scranton and became the first Div. III team to visit the White House after being invited by President Ronald Reagan to honor their success.

Wittenberg's Voices of the Hollow

Wittenberg has started an intriguing new feature on its website, called Voices of the Hollow, an audio podcasting series highlighting people and places that define the University.

First up is Betty Dillahunt '46, emeritus director of women's athletics. A fascinating seven-minutes of a 45-minute interview with Dillahunt are posted on Wittenberg's site:

The 1985 Wittenberg Athletics Hall of Honor inductee was a groundbreaking student-athlete, successful amateur and semi-professional athlete, legendary coach and, most importantly, an educator who made an impact upon thousands of students in a four-decade teaching career. Dillahunt won the Springfield women's golf title eight times, and she was a renowned fastpitch softball pitcher who played in seven world championships and hurled 14 no-hit games in a 25-year career. She was also a top field hockey player who earned all-star status while competing in 19 national tournaments. In her career, she coached nine different sports at Wittenberg and founded the field hockey program.

Dillahunt is a true sports pioneer, although she would undoubtedly wave off such a description. While she obviously did not play during the time of the NCAC, Dillahunt's outstanding accomplishments serve as the foundation for those who have taken to the fields and courts over our 23 seasons and for those who will in the future.

Please go to Wittenberg's site to listen some of the story of Betty Dillahunt's 60-year career as a Wittenberg Tiger.

Oberlin Hosts U.S. National Team

The United States Women's Soccer team practiced at Oberlin for three days last week to prepare for the first game of the six-game 2007 U.S. Women’s National Team Send-Off Series, which kicked off at Cleveland Browns Stadium on June. 16. The U.S. Women defeated China, 2-0.

For pictures from the practice, click here.

2006-07 U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup Final Standings

Denison might have seen its incredible streak of nine straight NCAC All-Sports trophies broken by Ohio Wesleyan over the 2006-07 season, but the Big Red do have something to celebrate - success on the national stage.

Denison finished 29th out of more than 400 NCAA Division III colleges and universities in the 2006-07 U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup Final Standings. The Big Red's finish leads all 10 NCAC schools and all Div. III schools in the state of Ohio.

Kenyon finished 44th, while Allegheny (61), Ohio Wesleyan (62) and Wooster (88) round out NCAC teams ranked in the top 100. Wittenberg (120), Wabash (147) and Hiram (191) also made appearances on the list, which highlights the top collegiate athletics programs in the country.

Teams earn points for their institutions in the competition by advancing to national postseason competition.

Welcome

Welcome to the NCAC blog!

We are a 10-member NCAA Division III conference which sponsors 22 sports for our 10 members: Allegheny, Denison, Earlham, Hiram, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, Wabash, Wittenberg and Wooster.

Founded in 1983, the NCAC believes that high-level athletic programs need not be sacrificed in order to meet rigid academic standards.

The NCAC brings together a group of institutions which share a common allegiance to academic quality and to the conduct of athletics so as to support the educational purpose. Intercollegiate athletics can and should complement academic life, rather than compete with it, and sports should enhance the experience of students during their college years. This type of academic and athletic commitment has been led by the 10 school presidents, who have taken an active role in the governance of the conference.

The NCAC's commitment to equity, its broad base of athletic programs, and an unwavering insistence on excellence in academics has served as a model for conferences throughout the country. The North Coast has shown not only that these ideals can coexist, but that they can flourish. The NCAC continues as a pace-setter in the 21st century.

We are excited to be launching this blog to share with you all of the exciting things going on in and around the Conference.