Facilities: Rollins College has opened the new Harold & Ted Alfond Sports Center. The project took 16 months to complete with a project cost of $11.3 million. The new facility is 73,500 square feet and more than doubles the space of the previous Enyart-Alumni Field House. The opening game in the new facility was a December 6 men's basketball game between Rollins and the University of North Florida. The official dedication will be in February.

Conferences: Morningside College has announced that it will withdraw from the North Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference after the 2001-02 academic year. Morningside also announced that it will temporarily discontinue football competition for a one-year period (2001 season). Morningside was one of nine charter members of the North Central Conference when the conference began competition in 1922. Richard R. Rush, president of Minnesota State University-Mankato, said that the conference's Council of Presidents regrets, but understands, Morningside's need to withdraw from the conference. "The members of the Council of Presidents truly appreciate all that Morningside has contributed to the NCC over the past almost 80 years," Rush said. "The NCC fully supports Morningside's decision to modify its athletics program as one part of the institution's new comprehensive academic and financial five-year plan." For the 2001-02 academic year, its final year in the North Central Conference, Morningside will participate in all sports in which the institution sponsors teams, with the exception of football. "For reasons of safety, Morningside College will not field a football team for the 2001-02 academic year," Morningside Athletics Director Beth Sibenaller said. Conference Commissioner Mike Marcil said that the nine remaining NCC institutions will keep the current conference football schedule for 2001 and that each institution will determine on its own whether to keep the date on which it was scheduled to play Morningside open or to schedule a nonconference opponent on that date.

-- Compiled by David Pickle