GNAC SAAC Letter to Our Conference Student-Athletes

The GNAC SAAC Commissioner's Council jointly wished to share its ongoing thoughts in these trying times with the GNAC's 3,000+ student-athletes.

Dear fellow student-athletes,

As student-athlete leaders, the rest of our teams and communities look up to us. Now more than ever, our leadership is needed in a different context we never anticipated.

Being collegiate athletes has provided us endless lessons for life off the field. We encourage you to use these lessons to be leaders for your Student Athletic Advisory Committees (SAAC), athletic departments, sports teams, friend groups, and families in order to facilitate safer navigation of this time.

We all are aware that the GNAC has been forced to suspend its spring athletic seasons. In addition, many of our campuses have transitioned to online learning.

We can agree that this is some of the worst news many of us have received in our academic and athletic careers. We cannot emphasize enough that every individual will process this information differently. Everyone will adjust differently to the changing circumstances surrounding our educations, our seasons, and our lives.

It's on us to take care of one another. Every school in our conference offers counseling and mental health services. We encourage you to connect your athletes to the services that your University offers.

The first step towards affecting change is simple communication: we encourage you to have simple conversations with each other to show that no one is alone during this time, and we are all impacted by this abrupt change, whether some of us show it or not.

Please share your message as you see fit with your University's athletes; we encourage you to apply this message to your unique campus in New England and share this message in the ways your University sees fit.

Your campus administration and the GNAC staff are working tirelessly to support our student-athletes as we navigate these uncharted waters. We will all work to keep each other informed as information continues to become available.

Our families and communities need us. You are prepared to assist wherever you end up. Trust your training and experiences to guide you now. As student-athletes, we come together from adversity and lean on those around us. We may lose our title as athletes when we graduate, but we do not lose the ability to be leaders in all we do.

Stay safe,

Respectfully, the GNAC 2020 Commissioner's Council:
Ben Lewis | Sr. | Colby- Sawyer
Morgan Mercier | Jr. | Emmanuel
Natalie Rivas | Sr. | Johnson and Wales (RI)
Brandon Milburn | Sr. | Norwich
Lillian Bisset | Sr. | Saint Joseph's (ME)

GNAC Note: Lewis, Mercier, Rivas, Milburn and Bisset all represented the GNAC at the 2020 NCAA Convention in Anaheim this past January. As a result of the COVID-19 health crisis, the GNAC has been forced to cancel its spring seasons, as well as its March 29 GNAC SAAC Forum at Emmanuel College.

The Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) is an NCAA Division III association made up of 13 member institutions and over 3,000 student-athletes across the New England region. Founded in 1995, the GNAC annually sponsors and administers 22 championships, while balancing academic integrity, athletic opportunity and community involvement in an effort to enhance the student-athlete experience. 

– #TheGNAC –