Aside from one lone runner in junior Noah Droddy for the men's cross-country team, each fall sports team has completed its first season in the North Coast Athletic Conference.
The Tigers came away with one regular season co-championship trophy and one NCAC tournament title and learned much about their new opponents and levels of competition.
Before the start of the season, most head coaches were concerned about how they would scout and learn about completely new teams. But as head coach of the men's soccer team, Brad Hauter explained, the talent level in the conference was so high that it took an extra amount of preparation before games.
"We don't have a lot of data and history on these teams," Hauter said. "It took us a lot more time on our efforts and scouting to try and piece together how we were going to play."
Hauter's team was the only Tiger team out of the six fall sports competing in the NCAC to win a conference title, claiming an automatic bid to the NCAA Div. III tournament. (Football maintained an independent schedule and will join the conference next season). According to Hauter, his players and staff learned that DePauw must play at a high level in every game because just one loss could put the Tigers behind in the standings.
"The thing we learned was just how close and competitive each of these programs are," Hauter said. "The separation between teams in the conference is marginal, and so my hope is that the biggest lesson we've learned is you just can't take any team for granted. There's no room to blink and take your foot off the gas."
Like men's soccer, the field hockey team saw much success in its first NCAC season, going 13-1 in the conference and crowned regular season co-champions with Denison University. The Tigers could not claim a tournament title as Denison defeated the Tigers in the NCAC tournament final.
"They are really motivated for next season and were disappointed by the way this one ended," said head coach Gina Preston. "Having that experience playing in the championship game and knowing what that feels like prepares us better for next season."
Preston and her team now know where they stand in the conference and like the field hockey team, head coach of volleyball Deb Zellers also learned about the great amount of talent in the NCAC similar to that of the SCAC.
"We learned where we stand in this conference," Zellers said. "We pretty much stand in this conference like we did in the last conference, we have some good teams ahead of us and we're still that good team trying to be a great team."
Zellers' team finished 11-5 in the conference, good for fourth place behind the regular season and tournament champions, Wittenberg University and Hiram College. Both Hiram and Wittenberg proceeded to the NCAA tournament. Like the volleyball team, the two cross-country teams, coached by Kori Stoffregen, ran into a conference loaded with talent.
"I knew the depth of the conference would be good, and it actually was probably better than I anticipated," Stoffregen said. "DePauw teams will have to be on top of their games all the time. We can't be going through the motions and expect to do well in this conference."
The men's team finished fifth while the women finished third in the NCAC. Oberlin College took the NCAC women's title and finished fourth in the regional meet last Saturday. On the men's side, Wabash College claimed the title and finished fourth in the region. The top two finishers in the men's regional meet came from the NCAC.
"When they look around the conference and see how well our competitors are doing, hopefully they see we have to work hard to get back to the top," Stoffregen said.
What was challenging for each team was the amount of scouting they had to do on the new opponents. Hauter was at a disadvantage to the other conference teams because of DePauw's location.
"The challenge is that we were the outliers of the conference and we had to travel more just to scout teams," Hauter said. "Other coaches can get into their car after practice and go watch a game."
For Zellers, scouting the new opponents took more time sometimes starting with a completely clean slate in terms of what the team knew about opponents.
"We went in playing those games starting from scratch," Zellers said. "We didn't really have any information on who those teams were and who the best players were. We had to learn everyone from scratch."
Zellers was aided by the NCAC film exchange program that requires all teams to exchange tape of games to each conference opponents. The film helped the volleyball team prepare for what it would be up against, but going in to the Tigers' second season the team hopes to take advantage of what they learned and continue to grow into a great team.
But one aspect of the SCAC that Zellers said her team did miss was the long travel to the distant SCAC schools in Texas and Colorado.
"We really did like the SCAC, because our athletes like being able to fly and going to places," Zellers said. "We established such great rivalries in that conference, so part of the challenge was getting our players to know who the NCAC is."
Although the long travel will be missed, the volleyball players enjoyed the extra rest they received on their day off after a game. Because travel distances were shorter, teams returned to campus much earlier than they did in the SCAC.
"The day we came back after the day off, we were a little bit fresher," Zellers said. "We weren't getting back at 4:30 a.m., so I do feel like it helped from a sleep standpoint and that helped with overall health as a team."
The reasons for the conference switch included less travel time and strong competition for student athletes at DePauw. Most teams found much success in the conference and are primed to make an even bigger splash in the second season in the NCAC next year.