NCAC Celebrates 40 Years

Launches #HashtagChallenge

For 40 years, the North Coast Athletic Conference has been a trailblazer in college athletics. The NCAC plans to celebrate that history over the course of the 2023-24 academic year.

The conference's celebration will highlight the individuals and incredible moments that have led the NCAC to become a leader in Division III. Throughout the upcoming year, the conference will release NCAC All-Decade teams in each sport, showcase historical facts and figures about the last 39 years, and recognize members of the #NCACFamily that have provided service and leadership to the conference. The year will culminate with an expanded conference awards dinner and a conference-wide workshop focusing on health, wellness and diversity and inclusion topics.

#HASHTAGCHALLENGE
To kick off our celebration, we need a way for everyone to join in the conversation. So, the conference is launching a Hashtag Challenge! Help us define a hashtag in honor of our 40th anniversary. Any NCAC student-athlete can submit their best hashtag idea here: Contest Link.  We're accepting entries through August 22 at 5:00 p.m.

Once we reach the deadline for submissions, a panel of student-athletes, coaches, FARs and administrators will select the top three entries. The winning hashtag will be selected by fan voting among the top three entries across the NCAC social media platforms. The student who submitted the winning hashtag will receive an NCAC prize pack.

THE NCAC
The NCAC is the Home of Scholar-Athletes, and that’s something we don’t take lightly. 40 years ago, a group of like-minded institutions got together and decided that some things had to change in college athletics. This alliance wasn’t formed to negotiate a new television contract. It wasn’t about increasing attendance and revenue, and it wasn’t about promoting one or two sports over the rest. This alliance was about OPPORTUNITY and giving scholar-athletes a life-changing four-year experience.

The Conference's then-new principles and goals were revolutionary in the conservative world of college athletics at the time. Our model, which was based on inclusion while boldly proclaiming that women’s sports were equal to men’s sports, that no sport was more important than any other, and that presidents should have the ultimate authority in athletics, has been copied widely over the past 39 years.

The nine highly selective liberal arts colleges and universities that make up the core of the North Coast, along with our four affiliate members, are unique in their own ways. But the beautiful thing about our successful partnership is that they all share common beliefs that are not clouded by finances or pecking orders. In the NCAC, high-level athletic programs go hand-in-hand with rigid academic standards.

There were skeptics, of course. This was a new way of thinking about college athletics. However, we compete; we play to win; and we’ve done plenty of that over the years to the tune of 71 NCAA Division III national team championships, and 699 DIII national individual champions. We’re very proud of those numbers, but they're not what we hang our hat on.

We count our success in the hundreds of NCAC scholar-athletes who walk across their respective stages and accept their degrees annually, when our graduates build careers, start families and positively impact their communities.
 

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