Big West Conference Eliminates Males’s & Ladies’s Swimming & Diving Sponsorship

In the most recent shakeup out west, the Big West Conference has introduced that it’ll discontinue sponsorship of males’s and ladies’s swimming and diving, efficient July 1, 2026.

“This decision followed careful evaluation of NCAA Championship participation requirements and anticipated membership composition, which indicated The Big West would no longer meet the minimum institutional threshold required to maintain conference eligibility tied to NCAA Championship automatic qualification opportunities in the sport,” the convention stated in a press launch.

The present NCAA Championship ‘automatic qualifier’ guidelines say that convention champions beneath the AQ time commonplace solely qualify if 1) that may be a staff’s major convention championship meet, and a couple of) if there are a minimal of 5 groups for that gender.

“While this was a difficult decision, it was also a responsible one,” stated Big West Commissioner Dan Butterly. “Our priority is ensuring that student-athletes and programs have clear, stable pathways to meaningful competitive opportunities. Acting now allows institutions to transition to leagues where they can maintain NCAA Championship automatic qualification access and continue to thrive.”

The Big West could have 12 remaining full-time members after July 1, 2026 when Hawaii and UC Davis go away for the Mountain West; the convention will then fall to 10 groups and UCSD and UCSB go away for the West Coast Conference in 2027.

The convention will then add two extra California faculties, Cal Baptist and Sacramento State, plus Utah Valley University. That will make a ten staff convention with 9 positioned within the state of California.

The college can also be shedding three affiliate faculties in swimming and diving who’re heading to different conferences: Grand Canyon (males), University of San Diego (ladies), and Seattle University (women and men).

In spite of what the geography would possibly lead one to consider, comparatively few of these college sponsor varsity swimming & diving applications, particularly on the boys’s aspect.

There will probably be just one Big West college with a males’s swimming & diving staff for the 2027-2028 season, Cal State Bakersfield, and solely two ladies’s staff, Cal State Bakersfield and Cal Baptist.

In the discharge, the convention touted historic partnerships with the MPSF and Pac-12, although they didn’t say the place these applications would finally wind up.

Last season, with six males’s groups and 7 ladies’s groups, Hawaii swept the Big West staff titles.

Conference realignments have been nationwide, however have hit particularly onerous within the western United States as conferences fold, kind, and realign on what seems like a month-to-month foundation.

As a part of an try and deliver stability, the Big West additionally raised its convention withdrawal price to $5 million, which was beforehand $1.5 million.

Big West swimming & diving computerized qualifiers final season: