Norfolk State, three others from the MEAC will join Northeast Conference in baseball
Norfolk State is one of four baseball programs leaving the MEAC to join the Northeast Conference beginning in the 2022-23 academic year, the MEAC announced Tuesday.
The Spartans will join baseball programs at Coppin State, Delaware State and Maryland Eastern Shore in the NEC, which includes teams in New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The moves leave the Norfolk-based MEAC, a conference consisting of historically Black colleges and universities along the East Coast, without baseball.
The men’s golf programs at Howard, Maryland Eastern Shore and North Carolina Central will compete in the NEC. Women’s golf programs at Delaware State, Maryland Eastern Shore and N.C. Central will also join the NEC.
“The student-athletes at these schools deserve the opportunity to compete for an automatic bid to the NCAA Baseball and Men’s Golf Championships on a yearly basis, and this move will allow them to do so,” the MEAC said in a statement.
The 2022 MEAC baseball tournament, which was held at NSU, consisted of the Spartans, Coppin State, Delaware State and Maryland Eastern Shore. Coppin State won the tournament and fell to East Carolina and Coastal Carolina in an NCAA Tournament regional.
Due to a number of defections and other changes, the MEAC now has six teams in football, down from 11 as recently as 2017.
Eight HBCU athletic programs remain members of the MEAC.
With the addition of the four MEAC schools, the NEC will now have 11 baseball-playing institutions. The other seven are: Fairleigh Dickinson (Teaneck, New Jersey), Wagner (Staten Island, New York), Long Island (Brooklyn, New York), Merrimack (North Andover, Massachusetts), Central Connecticut (New Britain, Connecticut), Sacred Heart (Fairfield, Connecticut) and Stonehill (North Easton, Massachusetts).
“We are excited about our baseball team joining the NEC as an associate member,” NSU athletic director Melody Webb said. “This is a great opportunity for Norfolk State University as we continue to compete for a postseason berth while maintaining some old MEAC rivalries. The associate membership provides a new landscape to compete against seven new competitive programs and will only strengthen our baseball program moving forward.”
Spartans baseball coach Keith Shumate, who led the team to its lone MEAC Tournament title in 2021, said he welcomes the move,
“I like challenges, as do my players,” Shumate said. “It will be an honor to compete against the other 10 outstanding baseball programs in the NEC. I’m thrilled that our program and young men will be receiving such great increased exposure.”
The departing programs, the MEAC said, could come back.
“We look forward to their continued competition in MEAC athletics, which encompasses 14 men’s and women’s sports,” the league said. “In the event that membership expansion increases the number of baseball and men’s golf programs in the MEAC, it is our expectation that these programs will return.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com
