Nation’s Oldest Historically Black Basketball Conference To Remain In Baltimore
The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will reportedly remain in Baltimore for at least the next two years – through 2025.
According to the Baltimore Sun, officials from the nation’s oldest historically Black athletic conference made a joint announcement with the CIAA on Wednesday afternoon (June 1) that they had agreed to the two-year extension – less than four months after the tournaments’ five-day run at the now renamed Baltimore Arena in February.
“We don’t see this as a transactional partnership,” CIAA Commissioner Jaquie McWilliams said, according to the newspaper. “We really see it as a relationship that we can grow together and how we can mix and blend our missions and our visions of our communities in giving greater Baltimore, but also the greater CIAA an opportunity to be bigger and better over the next year, but really over the next two years beyond that.”
Additionally, Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott applauded the new deal.
“Together, we showed truly to the country that Baltimore and the CIAA go together like crabs and Old Bay, highlighting the shared commitment to Black excellence between one of our nation’s oldest [historically Black colleges and universities] athletic conferences and one of its Blackest cities,” the mayor said. “It really has been a match made in heaven. … As a huge basketball fan and as the mayor of Baltimore, I could not be more excited to be a part of this announcement, that the CIAA is here to stay in Baltimore.”
The CIAA consists of 12 men’s and women’s basketball programs from mostly HBCUs and moved its tournament from Charlotte, North Carolina, where it had been for 15 years, to Baltimore.
In January 2019, the Maryland city and the CIAA had agreed to a three-year contract for the tournaments in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Next season would have been B-More’s final year before the conference considered another destination.
