This is a list of college athletics programs in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
Notes:
Team | School | City | Conference | Sport sponsorship | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basketball | Base- ball | Soft- ball | Soccer | ||||||
M | W | M | W | ||||||
Penn State Schuylkill Nittany Lions | Penn State Schuylkill | Schuylkill Haven | Independent | ||||||
Point Park Pioneers | Point Park University | Pittsburgh | River States |
The Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I. The A-10's member schools are located mostly on the East Coast and Midwest of the United States: Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
The Northeast Conference (NEC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Teams in the NEC compete in Division I for all sports; football competes in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Participating schools are located principally in the Northeastern United States, from which the conference derives its name.
The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level.
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate and nicer facilities and a few more athletic scholarships than Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.
The Providence Friars are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Providence College, located in Providence, Rhode Island. They compete in the Big East Conference for every sport except for ice hockey, where they compete in Hockey East. The Big East Conference was founded in 1979 by former athletic director and men's basketball coach Dave Gavitt. On December 15, 2012, Providence and the other seven Catholic, non-FBS schools announced that they were departing the Big East for a new conference; on March 7, 2013, it was officially confirmed that Providence's new conference would operate under the Big East name. The women's volleyball team, which had been an associate member of the America East Conference before the Big East split, remained in that conference for one more season before joining the Big East for the 2014 season.
The Mercyhurst Lakers, representing Mercyhurst University which is located in Erie, Pennsylvania, are composed of 24 teams in intercollegiate athletics, including men's and women's basketball, cross country, golf, ice hockey, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, tennis, and water polo. Men's sports include baseball, football, and wrestling. Women's sports include bowling, field hockey, softball, stunt, and volleyball. The Lakers compete in the NCAA Division II and are members of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) for all sports except ice hockey, which competes in NCAA Division I; bowling, a sport in which the NCAA holds a single all-divisions national championship, which competes in the East Coast Conference; men's lacrosse and stunt, both of which compete in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference; and water polo, a sport in which the NCAA holds single all-divisions national championships for men and women. The men's and women's ice hockey teams are members of Atlantic Hockey America, formed shortly after the 2023–24 season by the merger of the men's former home of the Atlantic Hockey Association and the women's former home of College Hockey America. The men's and women's water polo teams play in the Western Water Polo Association. On April 4, 2024, it was announced that Mercyhurst would be transitioning to NCAA Division I and join the Northeast Conference starting in the 2024-25 academic school year.