WCC to include Grand Canyon, Seattle in ’25-26

Might 10, 2024, 03:29 PM ET

SEATTLE– Grand Canyon University and Seattle University will sign up with the West Coast Conference starting with the 2025-26 season, providing the league best understood nationally for its basketball programs 11 complete members for the first time in its history.The conference revealed the additions Friday, with the 2 schools set to leave their affiliations with the Western Athletic Conference after the next school year.”The WCC Presidents’ Council is purposeful in its effort to position the West Coast Conference as one of the premier NCAA Department I conferences in the nation, and the addition of Grand Canyon University and Seattle University bolsters the membership, enhances the profile of competitive quality and broadens the conference footprint into two major cities in the Western region,”WCC commissioner Stu Jackson said.The WCC’s membership is mainly based now in California with San Diego, Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, Pacific, San Francisco and Saint Mary’s. The only 2 schools outside of the state that are currently full members are Gonzaga and Portland.Grand Canyon, which remains in Phoenix, and Seattle will contend in 14 of the 16 sports provided by the WCC, however most of the attention will be on basketball.The 2 schools need to boost the competitiveness in a conference that’s been top-heavy in the past on the men’s side, with Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s leading the way.

Grand Canyon won its first guys’s NCAA tournament game in school history in March and Seattle’s guys won the CBI.The WCC also had 2 females’s groups reach the NCAAs last season after Portland won the conference tournament and Gonzaga earned an at-large bid and reached the Sugary food 16.” We are incredibly excited for this next

chance to sign up with the WCC, which is one of the country’s premier athletic conferences along with one of the premier basketball conferences in the nation, “Grand Canyon president Brian Mueller

said.For at least the 2025-26 competitors year, the league will have 13 schools contending in a lot of sports as Washington State and Oregon State will remain in the final year of a two-year agreement to complete as affiliate members. The two Pac-12 schools were neglected in the

last round of conference adjustment and will be affiliate members of the WCC in many non-football sports starting with the upcoming scholastic year.Seattle’s addition to the WCC is a reunion for the school after it contended in the conference from 1971-81 before the school dropped down from NCAA Department I membership. Seattle returned to the Department I level in 2008 and has actually contended in the WAC because 2012.” We are excited to return home to the West Coast Conference,

“Seattle athletic director Shaney Fink said.”Our trainee athletes will get an exceptional experience, gaining the rewards of contending versus gifted peers at mission-aligned universities within a tight geographical footprint.”