The Charleston Gazette, Mitch Vingle
WVU Tech hired outside help to assist in its quest to regain NCAA Division II status. The application was “tightened up,” according to athletic director Frank Pergolizzi.
For the second straight year, however, the Golden Bears were turned down.“Obviously we are very disappointed with this result,” Pergolizzi said.
The athletic director also expressed frustration as he tries to reverse the school’s infamous decision to leave the West Virginia Conference and NCAA five years ago and take up membership in the NAIA Mid-South Conference, a geographic nightmare that has strained the school’s travel budget and burdened Golden Bear athletes with road weariness.
“They don’t tell you anything,” Pergolizzi said of the NCAA’s reasons behind the decision. “They don’t want to be in a position to say you need to do this and, the next year, if you do it, still turn you down.
“At the end of the process, we’ll get a letter that will list the reasons for schools that were denied. It just won’t be specific to any school. At the end of the day, though, [the NCAA had] a competitive group of 16 schools and they were only going to take so many.”
The NCAA has been allowed to accept no more than 10 schools per year, but doesn’t have to accept any.
“It’s not necessarily what we did or didn’t do,” Pergolizzi said. “It could have just been the competition.”
Tech had been a charter member of the WVC since 1924, having entered the league as New River State College along with 15 other schools, including West Virginia University and Marshall College, before moving to the Mid-South.
Had Tech been accepted on Monday, a three-year process to gain full acceptance would have then begun. The school also would have needed acceptance by the West Virginia Conference.
Something, however, was missing in the eyes of the NCAA committee.
“There’s no question our application was much better [than that of last year],” Pergolizzi said. “We hired a former Division II commissioner [Tom Brown] as an adviser. We tightened up the loose ends.
“If there are ways we can present ourselves better, we’d be hard-pressed to find them.”
Now?
“That’s a good question,” Pergolizzi said. “I’m certainly not prepared to answer that today, but I can think of four or five options right off the top of my head.
“We could apply again next year – or not. We can stay in the Mid-South or find another NAIA conference. There’s one in the Virginia area and there’s also the Association of Independent Institutions.
“Those are options. Whether they are good ones or not, I don’t know because I haven’t studied them yet.”
Earlier in the month, Tech paid a $28,000 NCAA application fee, which will now be refunded to the school.
