The American International Yellow Jackets is composed of 22 teams representing
American International College
American International College (AIC) is a private college in Springfield, Massachusetts.
History
American International College was originally established on July 18, 1885, as the French Protestant College by Rev. Calvin E. Amaron, who soug ...
in intercollegiate athletics, including men’s and women's basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, track and field, and volleyball. Men's sports include baseball, football, ice hockey, and wrestling. Women's sports include field hockey, rugby, softball, and tennis. The Yellow Jackets compete in
NCAA Division II
NCAA Division II (D-II) is an intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It offers an alternative to both the larger and better-funded Division I and to the scholarship-free environmen ...
and are members of the
Northeast-10 Conference
The Northeast-10 Conference (NE-10) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. Member institutions are located in the northeastern United States in the states o ...
for all sports except ice hockey, which competes in
NCAA Division I
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 ...
; wrestling, which is NCAA Division II Independent; and women's triathlon and men's volleyball, which compete as de facto Division I independents. The men's ice hockey team is a member of
Atlantic Hockey
The Atlantic Hockey Association (AHA) is an NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey conference which operates primarily in the northeastern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as an ice hockey-only conference. Unlike several other ...
Division I.
History
The Yellow Jackets started competing in the 1933–1934 academic season in football, men's basketball and baseball. Men's soccer was added just one year later. The athletic department grew to five teams in the winter of 1948 when the Yellow Jackets started their ice hockey team.
Twenty years later, AIC introduced its first women's sport, softball. Judy Groff was introduced as the first softball coach, a position she held for 42 seasons. Volleyball, which was invented down the road in Holyoke, Massachusetts, started in the fall of 1974 with Groff also taking the reins.
In the 1977–1978 school year, AIC began competing in women's basketball and men's golf. It would be seven years before the athletic department grew again when they added women's soccer for the 1985 school year.
With the emergence of lacrosse in the Northeast, the Yellow Jackets added men's lacrosse in the spring of 1992. In 1996-97, field hockey and women's lacrosse were added to the department to bring the women's teams total to six.
Ten years later, the Yellow Jackets added six teams to their already extensive department in men's and women's cross country, men's and women's indoor track, and men's and women's outdoor track.
In 2018, the department added women's golf.
With the backing of USA Triathlon, American International College became the 24th team in the nation to introduce a women's varsity triathlon program to its athletic department, Director of Athletics Matthew Johnson announced on Tuesday, May 29 AIC expected competition to begin in the fall of 2019.
During the fall of 2020, the department announced the addition of men's volleyball as the 26th sport sponsored by the department. The team started play in January 2022.
Varsity sports
NCAA appearances
* Ice Hockey:
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
,
2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
,
2022
File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeypo ...
college rugby
College rugby is played by men and women throughout colleges and universities in the United States of America. Seven-a-side and fifteen-a-side variants of rugby union are most commonly played. Most collegiate rugby programs do not fall under the ...
program that was founded in 2009 and began play in 2010. The rugby program is part of the school's athletic department, has varsity status, with rugby scholarships available for students.USA Rugby, American International College, http://usarugby.org/college-directory/item/american-international-college AIC plays in Division I in the D1A Conference.
Jim Calhoun
James A. Calhoun (born May 10, 1942) is a longtime college basketball coach. He is best known for his tenure as head coach of the University of Connecticut (UConn) men's basketball team. His teams won three NCAA national championships ( 1999, ...
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...
1st Haitian wrestler in Summer Olympics in the 74 kg freestyle competition also the flag bearer of the Haitian delegation for the Olympics opening.
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Mario Elie
is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his cr ...
Dave Forbes
David Stephen Forbes (born November 16, 1948) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He played for the Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League between 1973 and 1978, and for the Cincinnati Stingers of the ...