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Honolulu, HI – March 15, 2006—The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) granted the Pacific West Athletic Conference its request to add two universities as affiliates: Grand Canyon University (Phoenix, Arizona) and Notre Dame de Namur University (Belmont, California). Continuing Pac West Conference affiliates include Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, University of Hawaii-Hilo and Chaminade University of Honolulu.
“Grand Canyon and Notre Dame De Namur are very good schools with competitive athletic programs. This is a great opportunity to be working with these two institutions as we continue to build the Pac West Conference,” said Chaminade Athletics Director and Head Basketball Coach Matt Mahar.
Recently the Pac West Conference had functioned as only a four Hawaii school conference. However, because the NCAA requires a minimum of six institutions to form a conference, Pac West Conference champions were not guaranteed a playoff berth in the NCAA tournament. Usually an automatic berth goes to the school who wins each NCAA conference. The NCAA approval of the addition of Grand Canyon and Notre Dame De Namur allows the Pac West to function as a full status conference.
In alignment with the proposal accepted by NCAA regarding Pac West’s 10 conference sports, Chaminade has agreed to include women’s basketball and soccer and men’s soccer to its intercollegiate sports program starting in fall 2006. The University has also charged the Athletics Director and the Dean of Students to fully review all CUH sports offered and to make recommendations by April 21.
“We are looking forward to continuing to improve our athletic opportunities at Chaminade University,” Mahar said.
Chaminade's athletics program competes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II level. The mission of the Chaminade University Intercollegiate Athletics Department is to provide an opportunity for all qualified students to participate in competitive sports while developing leadership and team skills. To find out more about the Chaminade Athletics program, go to www.goswords.com.
