Lycoming and Messiah to Empire Conference

The Middle Atlantic States Conference held its last wrestling championships in the 2005-2006 season. For 2006-2007, Delaware Valley, Lycoming, Elizabethtown, and Messiah went to the Midwest Regional; Scranton, King’s, and Wilkes went to the Metropolitan Conference, and Albright dropped the sport.

d3wrestle.com can now confirm that, beginning with the 2007-2008 season, Lycoming College and Messiah College will join the Empire Collegiate Wrestling Conference. The invitation came around the time of the national tournament and was announced by Lycoming on June 13th and the Messiah College schedule shows them competing in the ECWC championships on February 23rd, 2008. Other teams in the ECWC are Brockport, Cortland, Ithaca, Oneonta, Oswego, and RIT.

This new arrangement will likely result in an addition of 1-2 national qualifiers to the Empire Conference and a matching decrease in the Midwest regional, assuming the Midwest Region does not lose any more teams. Of course, the relative performance of each qualifier in 2007 as compared to 2004 will have the final say, as the formula is based on three years worth of performance. Messiah has not had an All-American since 2003, but Lycoming’s calculation will include two from 2005 and one from 2006.