Bryn Athyn shutting down athletics + Coaching carousel update
One of the UEC's two 20-win teams in 2024-25 just played its final season
We have officially entered the offseason, but that doesn’t mean the news cycle slows down one bit. I’ll have a breakdown of my season-end Top 25 ballot for D3hoops.com tomorrow (looking at each of the 25 teams I voted for and my brief thoughts on each), but first, we have some news to examine on this Thursday morning.
Per a report from Hoopsville on X/Twitter on yesterday afternoon, Bryn Athyn College, a member of the United East Conference, will cease to sponsor all varsity sports at the end of the current academic year. A letter from Bryn Athyn President Sean Connelly confirmed the decision from the school, noting that Bryn Athyn currently faces a “true deficit” of $3.4 million. Currently, athletics accounts for 12% of the college’s overall budget, with Connelly noting athletic expenses can “climb as high as 21% when accounting for overhead”. By comparison, a study of 69 non-football D-III institutions was cited, noting that the average athletic spending for those schools was 3% of the institution’s budget. As Connelly noted, that means Bryn Athyn is operating athletics “at 400–700% of the national benchmark.”
“This level of financial expenditure is unsustainable,” Connelly added. “And the choice, due to NCAA requirements, is binary: maintain ten teams or none.” The difficult choice for Bryn Athyn was none.
“This is hard,” Connelly said later in the letter. “But the deeper injustice would be to ignore reality and jeopardize the future of our beloved College. Since 2007, Bryn Athyn College’s total cumulative operating deficit is $48.7 million.”
» Link to letter from Bryn Athyn President Sean Connelly
For an institution with just 255 full-time undergrad students (per Bryn Athyn’s most recent filing with the U.S. Department of Education, this decision is understandable, yet surprising at the same time. 136 of those 255 were student-athletes, meaning 53% of the student body competed in a varsity sport for the college. Now the question becomes how many of those student-athletes will remain at Bryn Athyn after the discontinuation of athletics, something that has the potential to significantly drop Bryn Athyn’s enrollment numbers.
It is a particularly notable announcement from a basketball perspective, considering the men’s program won its first conference championship less than a month ago after a 20-9 campaign. The Lions faced Hampden-Sydney College in the opening round of their first—and evidently, only—NCAA Tournament appearance in program history.
On the women’s side, sixth-year head coach Travis Ponton elevated the program’s success in recent years, leading the Lions to a 21-7 record this past season. It marked just the second 20-win season in the last decade for the program, as Bryn Athyn reached the UEC Tournament semifinals and went 12-4 in conference play. The women’s team increased its overall win total in every season under Ponton (excluding an abbreviated year in 2020-21), going from six wins in 2019-20 to 21 in 2024-25. Bryn Athyn was set to return two starters from last year’s team in 2025-26.
» Story from D3sports.com (link)
Coaching Carousel beginning to spin
Amongst the most notable head coaching moves in recent days is the news that Polly Thomason is no longer leading the program at the University of Hartford. I got word of the coaching change there on Wednesday night, and by yesterday, Thomason was no longer listed on Hartford’s athletic staff directory. No official statement has been given by the university. Thomason, who previously led UT-Dallas to tremendous success, took over at UHartford as the institution transitioned from Division I to Division III.
The Hawks went 11-14 in 2023-24 and 10-16 in 2024-25, their first two seasons playing against a complete D-III schedule. Hartford, a member of the Conference of New England, is set to be eligible for the D-III postseason starting in 2025-26. Last season, Thomason led the program to a CNE Tournament berth, even with every player averaging 15.0 min/game or more being a freshman or sophomore. The future certainly appears bright for Hartford if that core group is retained, and that coaching search will be a significant one to keep an eye on in the coming weeks. This was not a coaching change many saw coming, as it seemed Thomason was a longer-term solution to help Hartford’s program find early success in a D-III world after the move from D-I. In reality, she spent just three years at the helm.
LaGrange already has its next head coach; the program’s third in three years. After Jasen Jonus departed for Oglethorpe last offseason, Destiny Lane-Frazier was hired, and led LaGrange to a 15-12 record in 2024-25. But Lane-Frazier is no longer head coach for reasons unknown, and Steve Kenner is set to fill that position heading into 2025-26, per a release on Tuesday evening. Currently LaGrange’s Director of the Panther Academic Center for Excellence (PACE), Kenner last coached in 2022-23 at Auburn-Montgomery, a Division II program. He served as interim head coach for a season there after spending the 2021-22 campaign as an assistant. Kenner was also head coach at Pratt Community College (KS) in 2020-21, and coached at the DME Sports Academy in Daytona Beach, Florida prior to that.
Spalding University, a program in the SLIAC, is also open after Ben Arsenault held the position for just two seasons. The job was posted publicly earlier this week. It is the seventh D-III head coaching job that is currently open, with Utica, Eastern Connecticut State, Austin College, Millsaps, Howard Payne, and Hartford also currently looking for head coaches.
Arsenault departed Spalding to take the head coaching position at Keystone College, his alma mater. The hiring was announced Wednesday, with Arsenault set to head coach both women’s basketball and flag football at Keystone. He went 21-31 in two seasons at Spalding and takes over for Jason Rhine, who moved to Cedar Crest College after leading the Giants to a 16-10 record and a 10-6 mark in the UEC in 2024-25.