What it means for Maryville College athletics joining Southern Athletic Association

The Southern Athletic Association announced Thursday that Maryville College will join its conference. The football and women's golf programs will join starting in the 2025-26 academic year, while all other programs will participate in the 2026-27 season.

Maryville is a founding member of the Collegiate Conference of the South, which was launched in 2022. That made the decision to depart all the more difficult, school president John F. Coker said in a news release.

“The decision to leave our current conference is not one at which we have arrived easily given that we are founding conference members and I have served as Founding Chair since the conference’s inception,” Coker said. “We are immensely proud of what we have built in the CCS.

“However, we cannot ignore the strategic opportunity offered by SAA affiliation, especially in these dynamic times for small independent colleges.”

Maryville was successful in the CCS, having won the 2023-24 Commissioners Cup for women's sports and conference regular-season titles in baseball, men’s basketball and women’s soccer.

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John Painter, Maryville's assistant athletics director for communications, detailed how the conference switch benefits the school.

"Other than us, There are only two other Division III colleges in Tennessee — Rhodes and Sewanee," Painter said. "Both schools are in the SAA, and it makes sense for Maryville to join them. Our school is seeing a lot of positive momentum, and this move will further raise the college's profile.

"The SAA is more competitive, so the move will be tough, but it is also a chance to take our athletic programs to the next level. There are a lot of positives associated with schools in the SAA, such as superior athletic and academic programs, and we're happy to soon be in that mix."

Centre (Kentucky) College, which has played Maryville 64 times in football, also is a member of the SAA.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: What it means for Maryville College athletics joining Southern Athletic Association