4 years in the past this month, Sonja Stills started serving as Mid-Jap Athletic Convention commissioner, one among a handful of girls to function an NCAA Division I convention chief.
Underneath Stills’ management, the MEAC has skilled progress and stability. Not too long ago, she teamed up with different HBCU convention commissioners to foyer elected officers for help with NIL guidelines to maintain HBCU athletics solvent.
“We’ve been connecting members of the Congressional Black Caucus for the final three years, and it grew to become essential once we had a dialogue with Rep. Lucia McBath with reference to what her suggestions have been,” Stills mentioned of the push to have a federal NIL regulation versus having particular person states resolve.
“Though there are representatives which will have come from HBCUs, they don’t actually perceive the athletic aspect of it, so we have to get in entrance of them to teach them about it.”
The trigger for concern is that and not using a federal NIL rule in place, HBCUs could be left with out steerage or help in determining the brand new panorama, which now consists of offering athletes with financial compensation or the power to generate income off of their identify, picture and likeness.
“We don’t have these profitable contracts; we’re not capable of pay our pupil athletes just like the Energy 4s,” Stills defined.
“HBCUs aren’t in contrast to the vast majority of NCAA faculties who received’t have the ability to pay their student-athletes. We wish to have the ability to present these alternatives for why our faculties have been based. Our student-athletes are coming for an schooling. We nonetheless need to be certain that we’re in a position to do this and nonetheless have championship entry. We wish them to generate income off their identify, picture and likeness, but in addition perceive the monetary limitations that now we have.”
One other problem of concern for Stills and the MEAC is President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI sentiment and its unsure influence on member establishments.
Stills worries in regards to the backlash in opposition to DEI however believes the MEAC and the HBCU neighborhood at massive can soldier on.
“We’ve been capable of survive; that’s why we have been created, to offer alternatives the place there have been none,” she says. “I feel we are going to discover methods to thrive regardless as a result of that’s what we’re manufactured from. It’s in our DNA to do loads with a bit of.”
Excessive-profile soccer hires carry ‘viability’ to MEAC
Stills can be inspired that Norfolk State and Delaware State made waves with their soccer teaching hires this low season, serving to give the MEAC a public increase.
“It’s a good way to carry extra consideration and eyes to the viability of HBCUs,” she mentioned of Norfolk State hiring Michael Vick and Delaware State bringing on DeSean Jackson. “HBCUs have been constructed on offering alternatives, so giving them each a possibility to do one thing they like to do and provides again is superb.”
Convention will keep the course on enlargement
Stills says enlargement and new sports activities choices are on the desk (males’s and girls’s golf, together with ladies’s flag soccer, will probably be coming quickly), however the MEAC will weigh the method rigorously.
“We all the time have membership enlargement on our minds, however now we have to be affected person and keep the course with our strategic and long-range plan,” she mentioned. “You by no means know what the longer term will carry.”