SEATTLE — Grand Canyon College and Seattle College will be a part of the West Coast Convention starting with the 2025-26 season, giving the league greatest identified nationally for its basketball applications 11 full members for the primary time in its historical past.
The convention introduced the additions Friday, with the 2 colleges set to go away their affiliations with the Western Athletic Convention after the following college yr.
“The WCC Presidents’ Council is deliberate in its effort to place the West Coast Convention as one of many premier NCAA Division I conferences within the nation, and the addition of Grand Canyon College and Seattle College bolsters the membership, enhances the profile of aggressive excellence and expands the convention footprint into two main cities within the Western area,” WCC commissioner Stu Jackson stated.
The WCC’s membership is usually based mostly now in California with San Diego, Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, Pacific, San Francisco and Saint Mary’s. The one two colleges exterior of the state which are at present full members are Gonzaga and Portland.
Grand Canyon, which is in Phoenix, and Seattle will compete in 14 of the 16 sports activities provided by the WCC, however many of the consideration will likely be on basketball.
The 2 colleges ought to bolster the competitiveness in a convention that is been top-heavy prior to now on the lads’s aspect, with Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s main the way in which. Grand Canyon gained its first males’s NCAA event recreation at school historical past in March and Seattle’s males gained the CBI.
The WCC additionally had two girls’s groups attain the NCAAs final season after Portland gained the convention event and Gonzaga earned an at-large bid and reached the Candy 16.
“We’re extremely excited for this subsequent alternative to hitch the WCC, which is without doubt one of the nation’s premier athletic conferences in addition to one of many premier basketball conferences within the nation,” Grand Canyon president Brian Mueller stated.
For at the very least the 2025-26 competitors yr, the league could have 13 colleges competing in most sports activities as Washington State and Oregon State will likely be within the ultimate yr of a two-year settlement to compete as affiliate members. The 2 Pac-12 colleges had been neglected within the final spherical of convention realignment and will likely be affiliate members of the WCC in most non-football sports activities starting with the upcoming tutorial yr.
Seattle’s addition to the WCC is a reunion for the college after it competed within the convention from 1971-81 earlier than the college dropped down from NCAA Division I membership. Seattle returned to the Division I degree in 2008 and has competed within the WAC since 2012.
“We’re excited to return house to the West Coast Convention,” Seattle athletic director Shaney Fink stated. “Our scholar athletes will obtain an unparalleled expertise, reaping the rewards of competing towards gifted friends at mission-aligned universities inside a decent geographic footprint.”