NORTH ANDOVER – Last October, the news broke that Merrimack College athletics — minus football, ice hockey and a few other programs — would be leaving the Northeast Conference and accepting an invitation from the MAAC (Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) with competition starting in the fall of 2024.
The jump comes after spending five years in the NEC after making the leap from Division 2 to Division 1.
Now, the leap to a bigger and overall more competitive conference means much more exposure for the Warrior programs — especially men’s basketball, the lead sport of the new conference. The MAAC was ranked 23rd overall among the 32 Division 1 conferences in men’s hoop. The Northeast Conference was ranked last at No. 32.
In 2022, the No. 15 seed St. Peter men’s basketball team — the MAAC champions — pulled off three big upsets in the NCAA Tournament over No. 2 Kentucky, No. 7 Murray State and No. 3 Purdue, before losing to North Carolina in the Elite 8.
Back in March of 2023, Merrimack won the NEC championship, which had an NCAA tourney bid, but the Warriors were not eligible for NCAA tourney play, because of the NCAA rule of moving from Division 2 to Division 1.
The addition of Merrimack and Sacred Heart gives the MAAC 13 schools with 12 Catholic affiliated universities. Of the other 12 members, six are located in New York, three in Connecticut, two in New Jersey and one in Maryland. Merrimack’s baseball/softball, basketball, cross country/outdoor track, golf, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, tennis, rowing and women’s volleyball teams will now be in a conference along with Iona, Siena, Rider, Manhattan, Niagara, Marist, Fairfield, Mt. St. Mary’s, Quinnipiac, St. Peter’s and Canisius.
The MAAC doesn’t offer football, ice hockey, men’s volleyball, field hockey and bowling. Both the Merrimack men and women’s ice hockey teams will remain in Hockey East, while the football, men’s volleyball programs and women’s bowling will play an independent schedule with hopes of finding a new conference in the next year or two, and field hockey will remain in the NEC.
While the move should be a major boost for the men’s basketball program, it should also help some of the small athletic programs.
“I think this move will enhance our recruiting,” said Ray Lewis, who is the head coach of both the women and men’s volleyball programs. “The schools that we are aligning with are a really good fit as far as what Merrimack believes in as an institution, so I believe we’re going to be able to get even higher academic and a higher student-athlete profile kids from being in that conference.”
The Eagle-Tribune spoke to five Merrimack Coaches to get their thoughts on the move. Here’s what they had to say.
Tony Marone, Men’s Soccer (43 years)
“(The MAAC is) a competitive conference academically and certainly athletically. There’s a lot of excitement not only with my program but with the entire athletic department and all of the different sports. We’re looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and seeing how well we can compete. We obviously have done well as a department and as an individual program in the NEC coming up from D2 to D1 over the past five years, but this is a new challenge, so there’s a lot of excitement.
“We only played Siena from the conference in prior years, so we never played most of the teams (in the MAAC). So really it’s a new challenge and we’ll be trying to figure out how we stack up, how those teams play and the level of competition. Based on historical experiences, it’s a very competitive league so we’re very excited about the challenge.
“I don’t really see a lot of changes in the ways we recruit or do things, it’s just a matter of airing out the competition and try to figure out the best way to play and give ourselves the best chance of the result (that we want).”
Elaine Schwager, Softball (10 years)
“It’s a great move. The stability of the MAAC, the fact that it’s a little bigger conference and also we have the opportunity to recruit against schools that are very similar to us being all Catholic and Private. I think it’s an excellent move. From an athletic standpoint, it’s pretty parallel for us. It’s competitive and I do like the opportunity of playing in a bigger conference. It allows us to play a consistent schedule and we will have probably around 26 conference games so that’s good for us, that’s for sure. We certainly didn’t move above our heads, that’s for sure.
“Certainly the move to Division 1 changed our demographic opportunity of recruiting. That being said there’s certainly a hotbed of athletes down in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and some of those areas, so there’s a little bit of an appeal for some of those recruits as they’ll be able to play in their neck of the woods (for conference games) if they choose us.”
Brian Murphy, Baseball (4 years)
“It’s a move that kind of showcases how well the school’s done with the initial part of the transition to Division 1. In general this aligns the schools and it aligns Merrimack and its athletic programs with schools that make sense for us and where we’re at right now, so I think this is a good thing. There’s a lot of positives with this move for sure.”
Ray Lewis, Men/Women’s Volleyball (2 years)
“I’m really excited about the move and I think it’ll help our overall level of play and give our programs more exposure, so yeah I think it’s going to be very beneficial. The women’s conference has been established and they’ve had some success so I think it’ll definitely be a real good move.
“Coming in, I’ve had experiences on the women’s side of turning around a couple of programs, so last year I was there from start to finish whereas the year before I got there in the middle of the season and that made a ton of difference. We made a ton of progress and finishing fifth in the league was a big step for us. We were a couple of wins away from making the playoffs, so we want to build off of that (and hope to in the MAAC).”
Joe Gallo, Men’s Basketball (7 years)
“Is it going to be a challenge? Absolutely. But it’s been that way ever since I first got here (in 2016) as a Division 2 program. The program had lost five seniors. It hadn’t made the NCAA tourney in 10 years. Then the transition to Division 1 started and everyone told me how hard that would be, so it was another challenge. This is absolutely a challenge. But that’s why we do this. We want to be challenged, to get better. The competitiveness in you accepts that this will not be easy.”
Twitter: @JamiePote