Campbell accepts CAA invite

The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read

Aug. 4—BUIES CREEK — The Big South Conference will lose another school next year.

Campbell University announced Wednesday that it is accepting an invitation to join the Colonial Athletic Conference in all of its sports that the league sponsors on July 1, 2023. The school will remain a member of the Southern Conference in wrestling.

Campbell is the third Big South school to jump to the CAA. Hampton and North Carolina A&T made the move on July 1.

The addition of Campbell gives the CAA 14 schools in most sports and 15 in football. The CAA stretches from Boston to Charleston, but seven of the schools, including Campbell, are in a similar geographic footprint in the Carolinas and Virginia as the Big South, which shrinks to nine full members with the loss of the Camels.

Current members of the CAA in addition to N.C. A&T and Hampton are UNC Wilmington, Elon, College of Charleston, William & Mary, Drexel, Delaware, Monmouth, Hofstra, Northeastern, Stony Brook and Towson. Albany, Villanova, Richmond and Rhode Island are members only in football.

Campbell started a football program in 2008 and moved up to the Big South in 2018.

It will be Campbell's second departure from the Big South. The Camels were a charter member of the conference in 1983, left for the Atlantic Sun Conference in 1994 and returned to the Big South in 2011.

Camels teams won a school record 13 conference regular season and tournament titles in 2021-22 — winning championships in women's soccer (regular season), men's soccer (regular season and tournament), volleyball (tournament), women's basketball (regular season), men's indoor track and field, baseball (regular season and tournament), softball (regular season and tournament), women's golf and men's tennis (regular season). Campbell also won the 2022 Southern Conference wrestling tournament championship.

The remaining Big South members are High Point University, Gardner-Webb, Charleston Southern, Winthrop, Longwood, UNC Asheville, Presbyterian, Radford and USC Upstate.