Nov. 13 -- MITCHELL -- As the Great Plains Athletic Conference transitions into the winter sports season, it'll look to continue the gains brought upon from the fall.
That includes the continued growth of the GPAC Network.
Launched on July 21 to house all conference events in one central location, the GPAC Network is available through smart televisions and both Apple and Android smartphones. Prior to the network's creation, each of the conference's members livestreamed games through their own platforms, either for free or through a paywall.
Following other conferences across the country who developed their own platform to stream games, GPAC commissioner Corey Westra realized the inconvenience of searching for GPAC content during a blizzard last winter and the need to centralize the outreach of the conference.
"I was sitting at home and I was hunting around for GPAC games and I'm like, 'This isn't right, and other conferences have it," Westra said. "We're better than that, and so we're going to do this, and it has been well received."
The GPAC developed their network with Hudl and Blueframe software, and it's offered as an app on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple and Android TV platforms, which Westra said covers the vast majority of the alternative platforms to traditional cable and satellite viewing options. The results so far have been encouraging.
Throughout the fall, GPAC events have surpassed 100,000 views on the network alone, with some football games during the year drawing as many as 4,000 viewers. The average viewing time of a conference event is around 30 minutes, an impressive figure given the average attention span of most people in the country.
As the conference works to expand its outreach with the GPAC Network, its development led to the installation of a replay review system for football and basketball games this season. With local sponsorship, the hope is the numbers will continue to climb, Westra said.
"The GPAC Network has been doing great," Westra said. "We've got a great sponsor and I can't speak highly enough of the exposure the network has had for our conference and I think we're only going to go up."
As conference basketball play begins for most GPAC schools on Saturday, Nov. 13, teams will know games will mainly take place on Wednesdays and Saturdays for the foreseeable future.
In recent years, the GPAC has scheduled some basketball games on Fridays in the past, but with the University of Jamestown no longer a member of the conference, Friday games are no longer necessary. As Westra pointed out, it's difficult for the GPAC to hold games then with other offering in the area of the member schools. The change was previously in place to help with travel demands, with some GPAC teams playing Jamestown on Friday and then visiting Dakota Wesleyan on Saturday to hit the two northernmost league teams on one trip.
"(Friday games) were driven by a pretty strong outlier in terms of miles and a couple of schools agreed to do that," Westra said, "But now, the new schedule is back to the old Wednesday, Saturday format. ... It's hard to go head-to-head against high school. We don't want to, but we did it out of necessity."
Jamestown is in the midst of its transition to competing in the NCAA Division II Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference in 2025, as the GPAC cut the Jimmies loose following the conclusion of the 2023-24 season. Waldorf University out of Forest City, Iowa joined the conference this year, coming over from the North Star Athletic Association, keeping the current membership at 12 schools.
While scheduling has to get creative due to the women-only College of Saint Mary (Neb.) providing an even number of women's teams and an odd number of men's teams, the offering of 22 total sports creates strong environments to compete in. The GPAC has over 6,000 student athletes competing in the conference across all of them.
At the end, the conference continues to adhere to its founding principles of having private, faith-based schools making up the 12 members of the GPAC, with all of them working together to build one of the premier conferences in the NAIA.
"Our membership is strong, and it's a cohesive, strong group," Westra said. "What I really appreciate about this league is their steadfast commitment to remaining in the original, founding documents of this conference. When you start straying, things can go crazy pretty quickly."
Along with other leagues across the nation, the GPAC is tuned to what potentially the future of collegiate athletics might look like in the near future.
With much of the focus in the top levels of the NCAA away from the athletics itself and more on the transfer portal and name, image, and likeness discussions, Westra knows the conference has to be ready for whatever happens in the next few years, but believes the time is right for the NAIA and the GPAC to step in as an option for student athletes.
"Small college athletics is the best athletics," Westra said. "Kids come to these schools for the right reasons and this is the best space to be in for them, and for the fans who keep supporting these kids."
Recruiting continues to get more difficult with the wide array of options for students to choose from to continue playing sports, while participation has seen decline in recent years due to a variety of reasons. A pair of Iowa high schools cut girls basketball from their athletic program due to low participation.
The GPAC has also made cuts to its offerings, ending its sponsorship of men's volleyball following members dropping the sport. Other areas have seen growth, as the inaugural women's wrestling season for the conference began this year.
Westra said all the GPAC can do is forge ahead and continue to present itself to prospective student athletes as one of the strongest places to pursue their goals, and for the conference itself to push ahead the future contains many uncertainties.
"It's a lot of change in one year and I wouldn't recommend it for any conference to bite that much off in one year," Westra said of all the new elements added for this season. "Our administrators and coaches really did a good job embracing all those changes because our ultimate goal in the GPAC is to give the student athlete the best experience possible."