A long-expected happening was made official last week, with the announcement that UT-Arlington will join the Western Athletic Conference – the WAC – effective July 1st of this year.
Currently a member school in the Sun Belt Conference, UTA does not sponsor a football team and, thus, did not fit into the long-term plans of the Sun Belt as the league tries to position itself at the ‘top of the heap’ in the Group of Five, particularly on the gridiron.
UTA has been a member of the Sun Belt for nine years, beginning with the 2013-14 athletic year. A founding member of the Southland Conference, UTA competed in the Southland for almost a half-century, beginning in 1963 and leaving the league after the 2011-12 athletic year.
That one-year discrepancy between the Maverick’s departure from the Southland and their admittance to the Sun Belt was spent in, of all places, the WAC. The Mavericks had initially planned to join the WAC before accepting an invitation to join the Sun Belt shortly thereafter.
When UTA officially joins the WAC on July 1st, it will give the league a total of 14 softball-playing members. UTA is one of three programs that will join the WAC at the same time; Southern Utah and Incarnate Word will also add their names to the league’s membership roster at that time. Effective one year later, in July 2023, the membership roster will drop to 12 teams when New Mexico State and Sam Houston State depart for Conference USA.
Since arriving in the Sun Belt, the Mavericks have been a team to be reckoned with on the softball diamond. After finishing dead last in the conference standings in 2014, the Mavs rose as high as third in the conference standings in 2018 and in 2019. The squad earned 36 wins during the 2019 campaign.
Even in 2021, with a sub-.500 record and a 7th-place conference finish, the Mavs made some noise as one of three teams to beat the perennial-champion Ragin’ Cajuns in conference play and as the only team in the conference to post wins over three of the four NCAA tournament-bound teams in the league.
In 2019, the Mavericks participated in the National Invitational Softball Championship postseason tournament and emerged victorious as tournament champions. The Mavs were 6-1 in the tournament and beat Iowa State in a 4-3 game to clinch the championship trophy.
Peejay Brun enters her fifth season leading the UTA program in 2022; she owns a 95-102 record with the Mavs, including the shortened 2020 campaign when the Mavs were 12-13 overall and 2-1 to begin conference play before the season’s abrupt end.
The WAC is positioning itself to be a very strong softball league, and the addition of UTA will add to the league’s depth on the diamond. Don’t let a lack of show-stopping results fool you; UTA is a team that always seems to be in the hunt, and that will make a welcome addition to their new conference’s softball race.
