FOOTBALL JOINS NEW CONFERENCE
North Greenville University’s football team has played its first games as an official member of the Gulf South Conference.
Although NGU joined the ranks of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divi- sion II nearly two decades ago, its football team had been looking for a conference to call home ever since.
And it finally found one. A good one.
“Gulf South is considered one of the very best NCAA Division II football conferences,” says NGU Athletic Director Jan McDonald.
NGU had already competed against three Gulf South opponents since the announcement of its membership in the conference back in 2016, but never in an official conference capacity. Tat is, until the 2018 season.
2018 marked the first full season of Gulf South football for Head Coach Jeff Farrington and his crew as they entered fall camp as a conference member for the first time in program history.
Te Crusaders won their first game of 2018 on the road at Tusculum University on Aug. 30 and hosted their first home game of the season against Lenoir-Rhyne University on Sept. 8. After a canceled game due to Hurricane Flor- ence, the team’s official opening in Gulf South play was changed to Sept. 22 at Delta State University, where they won 33-20.
On Sept. 29, NGU used a late scoring drive against the 21st-ranked University of West Ala- bama team to earn a 4-point upset win over the Tigers at home. Tis game was the Crusaders’ first to be nationally televised on ESPN3. Te Crusaders improved to 2-0 in the conference and sat at the top of the league standings. Of the eight total league games scheduled for
2018, three teams were ranked in the final rankings from last season, including both Delta State and West Alabama.
McDonald believes that, as NGU plays com- petitors like these in the new conference, they’ll push NGU’s team to even greater heights.
“We will have to continue to make improve- ments in our football program as we compete against these institutions,” says McDonald. “We are very excited, we are thankful, and we look forward to playing in the Gulf South.”
Follow NGU Athletics at
nguathletics.com.
Pictured: Before each home game, NGU’s football team runs onto the field waving flags for each branch of the U.S. Armed Services in honor of the men and women who fight for the freedom of America.
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