The American Athletic Conference will welcome a new sport into the fold for the 2018-2019 season as the conference announced today that it will begin sponsoring women’s lacrosse.
The conference will feature six teams, four of which are already full-time members of the American: UConn, Cincinnati, East Carolina and Temple as well as Florida and Vanderbilt.
Five of the teams, all of them besides East Carolina, currently compete in the Big East Conference. The Pirates will begin their first program’s first intercollegiate season in 2018.
The American will get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, which will be decided by a conference tournament at the end of the regular season.