Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference members will schedule 10 percent fewer contests than permitted by Division III under cost-containment measures adopted by league presidents, but the league reversed an earlier decision to reduce the fields of league tournaments.

Measures adopted Saturday by the league’s Presidents Council resulted, in part, from a four-month cost-containment study.

“By virtue of the geographic makeup of the conference, the SCAC has been in the business of cost-containment since its inception,” said Dwayne Hanberry, commissioner of the league, which has members in nine states stretching from Georgia to Colorado.

“That being said, the current economic climate required further examination of the league’s business model. It is never a bad thing to re-examine how you conduct your business, and I think this exercise produced valuable results that will allow our schools to save real money and continue to make our league viable.”

Hanberry suggested that the 10 percent reduction in contests is the presidents’ most significant cost-containment measure.

“The SCAC Presidents Council looked at contest reduction to obtain a two-pronged positive effect,” he said. “It will, no doubt, save money for our member institutions. But it should also have a positive impact on student-athlete well-being. Hopefully, the few extra days of downtime from a student-athlete’s respective sport can be used for additional studies or for other extracurricular campus activities.”

All schools will be expected to comply with the measure for the 2010-11 academic year in all sports except football, which (due to existing scheduling contracts) will adopt the 10 percent reduction during 2011-12. The reduction does not affect conference scheduling models.

A student-athlete survey earlier this year indicated that 24 percent of current SCAC student-athletes disagreed with playing 90 percent of games allowed by Division III during a season, according to the league.

Other cost-reduction steps include:

• More clearly defined “hard” travel-squad sizes for each conference sport.
• Reduction of the number of contest officials in the sports of baseball and softball from three to two and in soccer from four to three.
• Increased multi-team travel. The conference office will align schedules in baseball and softball to allow teams the opportunity to travel together. The SCAC has played men’s and women’s doubleheaders in basketball and soccer since 1991.
• Increased Friday-Saturday competition, designed to permit teams to take advantage of typically less-expensive Sunday-morning air travel and to return from road trips by Sunday afternoon or early evening.
• A conference-wide lodging-reservation program, as well as use by visiting teams of campus dining halls when feasible.

Conference officials estimate the cuts will save $500,000 to $575,000 in direct budget expenditures league-wide.

The presidents, however, reversed another cost-savings decision from earlier this year and decided to maintain the original size of all conference tournament fields. They decided maintaining the student-athlete experience outweighs any cost savings that would be achieved by cutting the size of the championships fields.

However, the league will not consider conducting a postseason tournament in its newest championship sport, men’s lacrosse, until three programs planning to sponsor the sport beginning in 2010-11 join the five schools that will sponsor the sport during the coming academic year. Instead, teams will play a single-round-robin schedule to determine the champion.

The league plans to petition for automatic qualification to the Division III Men’s Lacrosse Championship once all eight teams are playing, and then will consider a postseason tournament. The league also will add women’s lacrosse as a championship sport in 2010-11, with five schools slated to sponsor programs by 2012-13.