ELKINS, West Virginia, January 6. DAVIS & Elkins College has announced plans to establish intercollegiate men's and women's swimming and tennis teams to start competition in the upcoming 2009-10 academic year.<\/p>\n
With the establishment of these teams, the College intends to increase enrollment by making Davis & Elkins more attractive to a diverse population of athletes. Director of Athletics and Head Men's Basketball Coach Amrit Rayfield said "We're going to be competitive right away. We want to make sure we start the season with a roster that can compete in the conference.<\/p>\n
The tennis courts will need to be enhanced to NCAA standards before the start of the season, while the swimming pool was last renovated in the late 90s. Recently, the Elkins Otters swim club, who shares use of the D&E facility with the Elkins High School team, donated lane lines. Through an agreement with the College and the two teams, many updates have already been made to the pool, including: a new scoreboard, touch pad scoring and starting devices, and new starting blocks.<\/p>\n
Both the community and the College have benefitted from the partnership. Once the new tennis and swimming teams are in place, both the courts and the pool will still be available for community, faculty, and staff use.<\/p>\n
Davis & Elkins College had men's and women's tennis teams, but both were eliminated in 2004. The establishment of both the tennis and swimming teams is a natural progression, as facilities are already in place, and have been maintained by D&E, as well as the community.<\/p>\n
Both tennis teams will compete in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC), like most of the College's other athletic teams. With the addition of the Davis & Elkins College teams, there will be 11 men's and 10 women's teams in conference competition. The women compete in the fall and the men compete in the spring. The NCAA championship is in the spring for both men and women. <\/p>\n
Currently, the WVIAC does not recognize swimming as a championship sport. The swim team will join the Blue Grass Mountain Conference, competing with a wide range of Division II and NAIA schools in Pennsylvania , Ohio , Maryland , Virginia , North Carolina , and South Carolina . In the future, the swim team may join the WVIAC as more conference schools add swimming.<\/p>\n
Although initial recruitment of prospective high school students for both swimming and tennis teams has started at college fairs by the D&E admissions counselors, the administration also hopes to draw from current students to begin filling the teams immediately.<\/p>\n
Special thanks to Davis & Elkins for contributing this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ELKINS, West Virginia, January 6. DAVIS & Elkins College has announced plans to establish intercollegiate men's and women's swimming and tennis teams to start competition in the upcoming 2009-10 academic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n