Simon Fraser sports fans can now drink beer and paint themselves in support of SFU teams during NCAA playoffs.

DAVID DYCK — The Peak (Simon Fraser University)

BURNABY (CUP) — Simon Fraser University’s membership in the National Collegiate Athletic Association officially took effect Sept. 1, making SFU the first Canadian school to be accepted into the century-old organization.

While SFU has been a member for the past three years, the decision was made recently to grant an exception to SFU’s lack of U.S. accreditation in order to compete in the post-season. This gives SFU the chance to win an NCAA national — now international — championship.

“It’s the culmination of a total campus commitment from President [Andrew] Petter to Tim Rahilly to everyone you can think of, to become the first international school to join the NCAA,” SFU’s athletic director Milt Richards told the SFU student paper, The Peak.

“It’s a tribute to Simon Fraser; if we weren’t such a great university academically, this wouldn’t happen,” Richards explained.

“To make a long story short, the president’s council [the policy makers for Division Two] had a meeting. They discussed it and basically said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do for Simon Fraser: as long as you’re a candidate for accreditation,’ which we are, ‘as long as you’re accredited by your country’s accreditation, we’ll waive the bylaw that says you have to be accredited with a U.S. accreditation.’ ”

While Canada has no accreditation agencies similar to those in the U.S., SFU’s membership in the Association of Colleges and Universities of Canada has served as an acceptable replacement. The AUCC is a lobby group that represents over 90 universities nationally.

Meanwhile, SFU is currently still in the process of gaining U.S. accreditation with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. It is projected that SFU will not earn full accreditation until 2017.

Richards made it clear that despite being in the NCAA, SFU teams will still compete against their Canadian rivals.

“We would not have enough games and contests and matches if we only played U.S. schools, and we are a Canadian institution and we’re proud of being in Canada,” Richards said.

Richards explained that the process for joining NCAA’s Division Two — the only division that has voted to allow international institutions to join — takes three years. In the first two years, the candidate institution is ineligible for championships.

He stated that last year’s SFU men’s soccer, women’s basketball, track and field, swimming and wrestling teams all would have had good chances to be in the NCAA nationals but were ineligible.

“Softball would have made it the way they finished the season,” Richards said.

“When you have a really competitive program and you tell a student athlete that they can’t compete in championships? You hate to talk about negative recruiting, but you know other people talked about that; well that’s now been removed. That’s a big deal.

“I’m ecstatic for the whole department, we definitely have some very strong teams,” SFU volleyball head coach Lisa Sulatycki said. “You look at the men’s soccer team last year, who didn’t get their chance, and now they’re going to have their chance to do that.”

The SFU men’s soccer team won the NCAA’s Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship last season but were not allowed to contend for the NCAA national title.

—
Photo: Mark Burnham/The Peak