It’s a shift that’s been over a year in the making.

The Emerson men’s volleyball team will move to the New England Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) in the 2026-27 academic year, following three decades in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC). The change comes as the conference adds men’s volleyball as its 21st varsity sport. Men’s volleyball will be the final Emerson team to transition to the NEWMAC since 2013-14, when the rest of Emerson’s programs moved on while the men’s team stayed in the GNAC as associate members.

The NEWMAC announced the addition of men’s volleyball on Aug. 19. Along with Emerson, three other Massachusetts-based colleges—MIT, Springfield College, and Wheaton College—will be transitioning to the conference. The period will include a year in the single-sport United Volleyball Conference (UVC), which will fold into the NEWMAC. Three New York-based schools—New York University, SUNY New Paltz, and Vassar College—will join as associate members.

In an interview with The Beacon, Emerson Athletic Director Steph Smyrl called the team’s move to the NEWMAC “fantastic.”

“Our experience in the GNAC has been great, but just knowing that our home for all of our other sports is the NEWMAC, having men’s volleyball come into the NEWMAC is amazing,” she said. “We’re really excited.”

Head coach Ben Read echoed Smyrl’s sentiments. 

“I don’t know why we wouldn’t have men’s volleyball in the NEWMAC,” Read said.

Read says that the competition will get higher with the change. Citing NYU’s undefeated run into the NCAA Tournament, along with the high national rankings of Vassar, SUNY New Paltz, and MIT, Read said that the tournament is home to some of the most prestigious programs. 

“It’s insane how competitive it’s going to be,” Read said. “It is the premier men’s volleyball conference in the country.”

Sophomore middle blocker Cash Muse shares Read’s enthusiasm for the opportunity, not only for himself and the returners, but also for the plethora of new Lions debuting this spring. Muse said that he is very excited to “play against some awesome guys” in the NEWMAC.

“[The new players] get to create a team that’s preparing for this now,” Muse added. “I think that’s a great opportunity for them in regards to their volleyball careers.”

Read and his players look forward to the new opportunities for competition that await them in the NEWMAC.

“It’s going to add a little bit more travel to us, which is going to be exciting,” Read said. “We have not typically done a lot of travel, cause there’s a lot of good teams in New England, but adding NYU, Vassar, SUNY New Paltz, those are longer trips.”

Read noted that the conference is discussing the possibility of travel partners for overnight trips, which the Lions have not done before. In that scenario, he explained, two New York teams would travel to Boston for a weekend to face Emerson and MIT at their respective gyms, facing one opponent one night and switching the next day.

“We’re looking forward to very good competition, and I’m optimistic we’ll get a little bit more support to help us with that transition,” Read added.

As one of 12 programs that already offer women’s volleyball in the NEWMAC, Smyrl said Emerson has been involved in the discussions over men’s volleyball “from the beginning.”

“It’s been … about a year and some change conversation, because there’s been a lot of shifts in the schools adding men’s volleyball,” she added.

The NEWMAC is not the only conference that sponsored men’s volleyball over the summer, as The Empire 8 and The Conference of New England (CNE) announced they would do the same starting next year. Those two will absorb the remaining members of the New England Volleyball Conference (NEVC), which will cease operations at the end of this academic year.

“It’s not a sport that every institution has,” Smyrl said. “And so, you’ll see that a lot of men’s volleyball programs are associates of other conferences, and there are a lot of [schools]—Springfield is one—that they’ve been independent, because they are a powerhouse.”

Smyrl noted that the conference change was a balancing act that required honoring Emerson’s current commitments to the GNAC.

“People want to be mindful when there [are] conference shifts or when people are leaving from one conference to the next,” Smyrl said, citing how often conference changes occur. “At the end of the day, we want to make the best decision for our student-athletes here at Emerson, and it was to bring men’s volleyball under the same roof.”

The NEWMAC needed four core members to sponsor men’s volleyball, a desire that was fulfilled with Wheaton launching its program next spring. From there, conversations shifted to how those members would be supported and which associates would join the NEWMAC and fit the conference’s requirements. Those include “academics, location, program size, [and] program stability,” according to Smyrl.

While many are excited for the change, there are some aspects that players say they will miss. Although the men’s volleyball team has another season left in the GNAC, Read said he’ll miss the close proximity of conference games. Similarly, Muse said he’ll miss the “communal aspect” of the GNAC.

“There’s definitely a unified understanding of where we live and [the] respect between the teams,” he added. “I think that’s something I’ll miss for sure.”

Smyrl says the unity of Emerson Athletics in the NEWMAC will further elevate the Lions’ national footprint.

“I think it’s a really exciting time for all of us to be under the NEWMAC name, [which] is a very known and well-respected conference,” she added.

Read believes the transition will be “great” for the department’s future.

“I think the reason Emerson moved into the NEWMAC a long time ago was [to join] a little more prestigious academic institutions, aligning yourself with schools that are academically similar to you,” he said. Without intending to slight fellow GNAC institutions, Read noted how most NEWMAC schools offered strong academic programs, including Emerson’s top-ten rankings among most of its majors.

“Now you’re doing the same thing with men’s volleyball,” Read added. “So, it makes sense.”

Muse shared Smyrl’s belief that the addition of NEWMAC men’s volleyball will raise the standard for Emerson as a whole.

“We need to get more people to show out at the games, because we’re going to be playing some incredible teams that we haven’t had the chance to really showcase in a gym like ours,” he added. “I know that all the other teams are extremely talented, but this is going to be an amazing opportunity to play against some really great schools.”

Muse is also certain the move will contribute to the growth of the Lions and the sport as a whole.

“I think that it’ll also ignite a fire,” Muse said. “[Volleyball] is a growing sport, and this will help amplify that.”