Per the official NESCAC website, Hamilton will become a full-playing member of the NESCAC for the 2011-2012 academic year. In addition to men's lacrosse, they will be a full-fledged member for the 27 other NESCAC sponsored sports.
http://www.nescac.com/news/2008-09/Hamilton_041609
In some ways, this move makes sense. Hamilton is already a member of the NESCAC for 21 of the conference's 28 sports. Hamilton will undoubtedly receive a bump in prestige by being able to call themselves a member of the exclusive NESCAC club.
As a NESCAC lacrosse purist, however, I am dismayed by this move. Hamilton has not had a winning season in 3 years (including this one) and have bad losses to Roger Williams (beaten soundly by Conn in the preseason), RPI (doubled up by Midd) and McDaniel (Conn lost by 1 in OT). Forcing the top teams in the NESCAC to play a bad team like Hamilton hurts their SOS and limits their ability to play out of conference games against top opponents. Who can Midd be expected to drop from a very challenging schedule? The same goes for Bowdoin and to some degree Tufts. The other teams should have no problem dumping a weaker opponent for Hamilton, but I am still wary of lowering the overall quality of a conference that is definitely the best in the nation this year.
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