The Sewanee women’s team has been selected for the second consecutive year to take part in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association indoor national tournament for NCAA Division III programs. Only eight teams are included in the Feb. 26-28 event in Greencastle, Ind. All eight were in the top 15 of the national rankings at the end of the 2014-15 season. Sewanee was 12th, while Carnegie Mellon, Pomona-Pitzer, MIT and Washington & Lee were sixth, seventh, ninth and 10th. Johns Hopkins, which has won the ITA Division III national championship the last three years, was 11th in the final rankings, and Washington (St. Louis) and host DePauw were 13th and 14th. Sewanee coach Conchie Shackelford lost All-American and Southern Athletic Association woman of the year Bronte Goodhue of Chattanooga from its team that won the SAA title for the third year in a row but still has All-American Lindsey Liles and four other returning starters in Maggie Crumbliss, Clementina Davis, Annie Veron and Christina Merchant, plus three recruits from Texas, another from Louisiana and Mary Jane McCaghren from Memphis.
Soccer
* Tennessee Wesleyan was projected to finish third and Bryan was picked fifth in the Appalachian Athletic Conference preseason men’s soccer poll, and Wesleyan was picked second behind Reinhardt with Bryan 10th out of 11 teams in the women’s voting. St. Andrews edged Reinhardt 76-75 in voting points for No. 1 in the men’s poll, and TWC got 67 points and one first-place vote. Bryan’s men, who won four of their last five games last year – with the loss by 1-0 to the NAIA’s top-ranked team – include seniors Miles Christian, Joel Glover and Josue Fernandez and 14 newcomers. Reigning AAC tournament champion Reinhardt got the maximum 10 first-place votes and 120 voting points in the women’s poll, and Wesleyan got 105. Third-place Point and Truett-McConnell each received 86, one more than 2014 regular-season winner St. Andrews.
Track & Field
* Lee University’s conference, the Gulf South, announced last week that it will be adding men’s and women’s track and field as conference sports in the 2015-16 school year, with expectations of official status beyond “emerging sport” labeling when Mississippi College completes official requirements for 2016-17 and Shorter and Alabama-Huntsville complete their affiliate relationships for the sport with the Peach Belt Conference. The additions will raise the number of GSC-sponsored sports to 16. “Track and field is a natural extension of the GSC’s sport sponsorship portfolio,” commissioner Matt Wilson said in a conference release. “With eight women’s teams and six men’s teams, we will have depth and quality at our championships.” Lee is one of the schools that has track and field already, both women and men. The 2016 GSC Championships will be held April 21-23 at Mississippi College.