SFU men's and women's basketball teams join CIAU
craig brown, sports editor

Simon Fraser University's basketball teams, after trying to remain in the NAIA without any success, have decided to apply to the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (CIAU).

Last Thursday, after news of the move was printed in the Vancouver Province, Mike Dinning and SFU Athletics and Recreation have announced the decision formally.

After being the only Canadian member of the American-based NAIA since 1969, SFU will now join the primarily Canadian league for college and university level athletics. Basketball will be the only sport from SFU to move into this league as the rest of the SFU varsity program will remain as independent members of the NAIA. The reason that basketball is the only sport to move mainly reflects scheduling problems.

SFU had no problems remaining in the NAIA until a few years ago when most of the West Coast teams in the NAIA started applying to and getting into the more prestigious National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Simon Fraser has also been trying to get into this traditionally American league for a few years now but to no avail, as the league constitution states that only American schools are allowed to play in the NCAA.

They have been registered as an independent team playing both NAIA and NCAA teams alike for the past two years now but always played in the NAIA for play-offs.

This agreement, however, comes to an end after this season and SFU tried to get a full acceptance into the Cascade Conference of the NAIA but was rejected, most likely due to the unbalanced competition of the SFU teams.

SFU also tried to gain acceptance with the NAIA through the Frontier Conference in Montana. Simon Fraser even volunteered to pay the travelling costs for the teams coming to Vancouver but were rejected by the conference. SFU then saw their time running out. "We then sat down and said we need to do something," said Mike Dinning, Director of Campus Community Services.

Though Dinning wanted to wait for awhile, possibly until the end of National Championships, the initial letter of indication to the CIAU had to be in by March 2 and the formal application by April. Dinning wanted the coaches and basketball athletes to know the details of the move before it went public, but Steve Ewen of the Province had already let the story out.

The biggest benefit of this move will be the reduction in travel costs for the basketball teams. Now the Clan's farthest opponents will be in Alberta and Saskatchewan, as opposed to Alaska or California. Some of the other teams SFU will now be playing include the UBC Thunderbirds, the Victoria Vikes and the Trinity Western Spartans.

Scott Clark, head coach of the men's basketball team, officially heard the news last Wednesday. Clark feels that the situation has both its positive and its negative aspects. Clark admits that is was nice to travel by bus to the majority of their games when the team was a full member of the NAIA but that the travel now is quite extraordinary. When the team travelled to play the University of New Mexico earlier this season Clark says he was "up at 4 a.m. and checked into the hotel at midnight. I'm glad we won't have more of those."As for the idea in general, Clark has mixed feelings. "It's not ideal but it's not horrific. I enjoyed playing in the NAIA but things have changed."

As for their team's performance in the new league, "We're going to be a pretty good basketball team next year. Without a question we could challenge to be one of the better teams in Canada."

Allison McNeill, head coach of the women's basketball team is in a more reflective mood after finding out on last Wednesday."I'm still a little stunned right now. The SFU tradition is a little bit lost and the opportunity is gone for a lot of kids."

McNeill has run one of the more successful basketball programs in the NAIA for the last decade and a move to the CIAU will definitely take away from her program's prestige, as well as SFU's attraction to new talent.

SFU provided new students an opportunity to play for American leagues while at the same time receiving a Canadian education.

"That uniqueness is gone," says McNeill, "we can no longer allow kids to travel to the places they wouldn't usually go to or to play different people then they did in high school."

One argument for the high level of play that exists in the American collegiate leagues is that they make our athletes play at a much higher level of competition. Two examples of this would be the appearance of SFU athletes on national teams. On the men's national Olympic team, only one player was from the CIAU and the rest were from the NAIA or NCAA, two of them being from SFU.

On the women's side, four of McNeill's athletes were part of the 1999 Pan-American national team.

As for the other sports up at SFU, they all have long-term schedules with the NAIA and as Dinning has said, "Nothing will be done with them in the short term.

"I'd like to wave my wand and have all of this go away. It's hard to put a hugely positive spin on it when you realize that what we've done for so long has been changed," says Dinning. "I believe there are some positives with this, we'll just have to wait our time to see what they are."

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