Officials at the Pacific West Conference have adopted a “pod” format for scheduling that is expected to reduce costs for league members.

“At a time when conferences across the country face severe economic challenges, the commissioner’s office and the athletic directors of the Pacific West Conference are taking pre-emptive scheduling action to preserve the competitive balance and financial stability of our programs,” said PacWest Commissioner Bob Hogue. “This could reduce institutional travel costs by tens of thousands of dollars over the next couple of years and hundreds of thousands of dollars as our conference continues to move toward targeted expansion.”

The concept of pod scheduling emerged from the athletics directors meetings earlier this month. Hogue said the pod format will apply to women’s volleyball, softball, and men’s and women’s soccer, in which teams will play a minimum of once during the season in an “imbalanced” format rather than the traditional home-and-home scenario. Hogue said pod scheduling will significantly reduce the amount of plane trips that conference teams take during the season.

Current PacWest schools that are full members of Division II are Brigham Young-Hawaii, Chaminade, Dixie State, Grand Canyon, Hawaii-Hilo, Hawaii Pacific and Notre Dame de Namur. Two others – Dominican (California) and the Academy of Arts in San Francisco – are in the process of classifying to Division II. Dominican is completing its first year of the two-year candidacy period, while the Academy of Arts has submitted its application for Division II membership.

Hogue said the PacWest will use three pods – the four schools in Hawaii (Brigham Young-Hawaii, Chaminade, Hawaii-Hilo and Hawaii Pacific), the three in the San Francisco area (Notre Dame de Namur, Dominican and the Academy of Arts) and the two in the southwest (Grand Canyon in Arizona and Dixie State in Utah).

The PacWest ADs also adjusted the upcoming 2009-10 schedules in all conference sports to allow for afternoon game times on so-called weekend getaway dates, which will allow traveling teams to reduce lodging costs.

League officials also took other cost-effective action, capping the conference’s women’s tennis championship at eight teams.

They defeated a proposal, though, to trim travel squad rosters, noting concern about health and safety, as well as the ability of traveling teams to be competitive on long road trips. However, individual schools are permitted to make institutional decisions on cost-containment travel restrictions as long as they adhere to competition rules set forth in PacWest bylaws and sport regulations.

“Reducing costs is paramount in these economic times, but we need to make sure our student athletes are never at risk,” said Josh Doody, the athletics director at Notre Dame de Namur. “The way we in the PacWest are approaching this challenge is through strategic planning and taking advantage of opportunities.”

Hogue said the league will hold monthly conference calls that may lead to additional recommendations.