BUIES CREEK – At midnight, July 1, 2023, Campbell University officially joined as a full member of the Colonial Athletic Association. The move, announced in August 2022, increases the CAA’s membership to 14 schools, joining new members North Carolina A&T, Hampton, Monmouth and Stony Brook as schools that have all joined in the last year. CAA Football will consist of 15 teams beginning in 2023.
The conference encompasses many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas with a geographic footprint that stretches from Boston to Charleston. It has produced 18 national team champions in five different sports and 33 individual national champions.
Campbell University Athletics is home to more than 600 student-athletes competing in 21 Division I sports — baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s cross country, football, men’s and women’s golf, women’s lacrosse, men’s and women’s soccer, softball, women’s swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field and women’s volleyball. Wrestling will remain a member of the Southern Conference.
The Camels are departing a 12-year tenure in the Big South Conference that produced the most titles and NCAA appearances since Campbell first joined the NCAA’s top level in 1977.
As a charter member, Campbell competed in the Big South from 1984-94 before moving to the Atlantic Sun (formerly known as the Trans America Athletic Conference) in the summer of ’94. After 17 years in the ASUN, the Camels returned to the Big South in the fall of 2011 and CU athletes and coaches lifted more trophies than ever before.
In the 12-year stint from 2011 through 2023 – even including the spring 2020 season when sports were halted by the Covid-19 pandemic – Campbell teams won 52 Big South Conference titles, including 32 tournament trophies and 20 regular season crowns.
The Baseball team won a combined 10 titles (5 tournament, 5 regular season), while the women’s golf team captured nine of a possible 11 (including the last seven straight). The softball team won the Big South regular season and tournament championship in each of the last three years.
Campbell also won Big South championships in men’s and women’s basketball, men’s cross country, men’s golf, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s tennis, men’s indoor track & field, volleyball.
Along the way, Campbell teams made 31 NCAA appearances, in addition to 45 individual trips to NCAA Championship competition.
Since the fall of 2011, 86 Campbell student-athletes earned Big South player of the year awards, 47 were chosen as freshman of the year and 32 as scholar-athlete of the year. Thirty-seven times, Fighting Camels were named Big South coach of the year.
The Big South bestowed all-conference awards on Campbell athletes 1,007 times from 2011-23, in addition to 172 all-tournament honors and 87 all-freshman recognition.
All told, since the men’s soccer team won the first Big South title in 1984, Campbell enters the CAA with 122 conference championships, including 35 Big South crowns from ’84-94 and 27 ASUN trophies from 1994-2011, plus its eight Southern Conference wrestling championships since 2017.
CAA MEMBER SCHOOLS: College of Charleston, University of Delaware, Drexel University, Elon University, Hampton University, Hofstra University, Monmouth University, North Carolina A&T State University, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Northeastern University, Stony Brook University, Towson University, and the College of William & Mary.
FOOTBALL-ONLY PROGRAMS IN THE CAA: University at Albany, University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Richmond, University of Rhode Island, and Villanova University.
