Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Baseball, women’s soccer to join ECC
Lions to transition from independent to league schedule next year
“This is a great thing. We are very excited for both our teams. It’s unfortunate what happened with the CIAA, and if they pick up baseball in a few years we would probably go back, but this is a great opportunity for our programs” – Lincoln University head baseball coach Anthony Pla.
LOWER OXFORD » When the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) decided to drop baseball as a sport it left Lincoln’s program without a league affiliation. And the school’s women’s soccer squad has never been in a conference.
In this day and age, trying to make a go of it in college athletics as an independent can be a challenge, but Lincoln found a way to turn the situation into an opportunity. It all came to fruition earlier this winter when the East Coast Conference (ECC) announced it was adding the Lions as an associate member in the two sports beginning with the 201819 season.
“This is a great thing. We are very excited for both our teams,” said baseball coach Anthony Pla, who has a personal connection to the ECC and had a big role in making it happen.
Lincoln’s other nine intercollegiate programs will remain in the CIAA, which LU joined after
elevating to the NCAA Division II level in 2010. The Lions baseball team will compete as an independent this spring, and the schedule includes multiple contests against the four other CIAA schools that also have baseball programs.
“It’s unfortunate what happened with the CIAA, and if they pick up baseball in a few years we would probably go back, but this is a great opportunity for our programs,” Pla said, who is entering his 10th season as head coach.
The women’s soccer program debuted at Lincoln in 2007, but the CIAA does not offer the sport. About a year ago, while serving as the interim athletic director, Pla was contacting conferences to see if there were any openings.
“I made calls to local conferences like the CACC (Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference), but they had just added Goldey Beacom,” he recalled. “But the ECC only had eight teams, so I contacted them.”
League Commissioner Robert Dranoff was interested in expansion, and the conversation quickly focused on baseball as well as women’s soccer.
“He was pretty ecstatic about the idea of bringing in both sports,” Pla said.
Just a few months earlier, Pla had learned that the CIAA was dropping baseball. In the last few years, St. Paul’s (Va.) dropped all of its sports programs, and then Shaw (N.C.) and Elizabeth City State (N.C.) dropped baseball, leaving the league with just five teams.
“They tried to get a couple other programs in as associate members, but it didn’t come through,” Pla said. “And because we only had five baseball teams, and lost our automatic bid to the NCAAs, they decided to drop the sport.”
In addition, Pla was very familiar with the ECC. That’s because he played college baseball at Bridgeport (Conn.), a longtime member of the conference.
Lincoln filed the paperwork, and the move was eventually approved by the league’s President’s Council. The addition will increase the number of schools participating in the ECC to eight in baseball and 10 in women’s soccer. With both sports previously having an odd number of teams competing, the Lions will fit seamlessly into scheduled byes on each team’s conference schedule.
“The opportunity to help provide to this historic institution and its baseball and women’s soccer student-athletes a conference affiliation was important for our ECC institutions,” Dranoff said of Lincoln in a statement.
“For me, it’s cool because I played in the ECC. It’s interesting to kind of go back,” Pla added.
“I know the kind of competition we are getting into. St. Thomas Aquinas (N.Y.) is a top-10 team in the country, and Brideport and New York Tech just dropped down from Division I, so there are some very good programs.”
Under head coach Emmanuel Awotula, LU women’s soccer recently completed one of its more successful seasons, winning six games with a tough independent schedule. The team loses just three seniors from the 2017 squad.
“My players and I have been working toward this day for a long time and we are ready for the next chapter,” Awotula said.