MC second in conference Cup race
By Marcus Fitzsimmons | (marcusf@thedailytimes.com)
Maryville College’s first season as a full member of the USA South Athletic Conference is shaping up to be a good one as the fall season concludes. The Scots, who were a football-only member prior to this school year, moved to the USAC from the Great South along with Piedmont and LaGrange and begin full competition with the start of the fall semester.
“Being in the hunt for a USA South President cup is very exciting,” said Maryville College athletic director Kandis Schram. “The President’s Cup represents a culmination of a department’s hard work as a whole. In light of this, our goal is to put our best effort forward in every contest. If the by-product of this hard work results in the Presidents Cup, then that honor would be ‘priceless.’”
Maryville stands second overall in the conference’s President’s Cup race at the conclusion of the fall sports schedule. MC is also second in the women’s cup standings and third in the men’s cup standings. Christopher Newport University leads all three races again. CNU has won the overall cup all seven seasons it has been awarded by winning or sharing the men’s cup in each of those seven years and winning the women’s cup six of the last seven seasons.
The 2012-2013 season is the eighth year the USA South will present an Overall, a Men’s and a Women’s President’s Cup. The USA South Athletic Conference President’s Cup symbolizes the league’s top men’s and women’s athletic program each year. The President’s Cup is awarded by a points system where the first-place team in each sport will be awarded the number of points that corresponds to the number of schools that sponsor teams in that sport. The second-place team receives one point less than the first place team and so on, down to one point for the last place team that competes.
Maryville fields teams in all but one of the conference’s sports. Women’s lacrosse is the only USAC-sponsored sport in which MC does not field a team.
SEVEN NATIONS: Things get tricky next season for the conference. Christopher Newport will remain in football, but this is the last season it will be a full member as it migrates to the Capital Conference. With the Captains’ football departure giving the indications to be much sooner than originally planned, it creates a unique situation for the league’s football teams next season.
The USAC adds Covenant and Huntingdon as full members next season, which with HC will make a nine-team conference for football. However, with the strong possibility CNU may be gone in 2014, it creates a situation with adverse consequences on the nonconference schedule.
To remedy the problem, the USAC has proposed a schedule in which each team would have one conference member it will not play in football to maintain the seven-game league schedule. This would keep schools from the awkward dilemma of having to drop a nonconference game for 2013 and then having to ask that jilted school if they could play again in 2014.
LONG DIVISION: Basketball will also be affected by the addition of Huntingdon and Covenant to replace CNU next season. The USAC will use division play along North-South lines, but it will leave the North side playing one more game than the South and has many conference men’s coaches knocking on doors for a nonconference game or two after a 16-game slate this year, where every member played every other member twice. Next season, it will be a schedule where division teams are played twice and the teams from the other division are played once.
