Of all the conundrums one faces in life, the one set before Mountain East Conference commissioner Reid Amos earlier this month was one of the best to have.
Amos, as a member of the NCAA Division II national football committee, had been association's site representative for the University of Charleston's first-round playoff game and the next three playoff games at Shepherd University. That included the national semifinal against Grand Valley State on Dec. 12. That same weekend, the Wheeling Jesuit University volleyball team was in Tampa, Florida, in the national quarterfinals.
As two of his conference's teams were on historic runs, Amos would have loved to be in both Shepherdstown and Tampa. But how could he balance that when he couldn't be in two places at once?
He did his best the entire weekend to keep an eye on both.
MEC senior women's administrator Hannah Hinton flew to Tampa for on-site support. Meanwhile, as he was running the pregame meeting for Shepherd and Grand Valley State, Amos had his laptop queued up with the box score of the Jesuit-Western Washington semifinal that was going on at the same time.
Then, on Saturday, after Amos stood at Rams Stadium to watch Shepherd beat GVSU to secure the first football title game berth in both Rams and MEC history, he turned his attention back to Jesuit volleyball.
"I get through running the postgame press conference and miss the first six points of the national championship match," he said. "Then I went to the Blue Moon Cafe about a block from Rams Stadium with my wife, and we watched every point of the national championship after missing the first six."
And he watched Wheeling Jesuit defeat Palm Beach Atlantic, 3-0, to win the Division II national title.
"That was not the place I thought I'd celebrate our conference's first national championship," Amos added with a chuckle.
That weekend was a highlight in the short, yet wildly successful history of the Mountain East, and part of the reason that Amos and the Mountain East Conference have been named the Gazette-Mail's Sportspersons of the Year.
"I cannot begin to express how humbled I am and on behalf of the Mountain East Conference how honored we are to be recognized for the MEC's collective accomplishments through our first two-and-a-half years in NCAA Division II," Amos said.
Over the last calendar year, the Mountain East, born in 2013, featured a regional men's basketball finalist (West Liberty), a national men's soccer semifinalist (Charleston), a national football runner-up (Shepherd) and a national volleyball champion (Wheeling Jesuit).
That was the plan when a group of college presidents in the now-defunct West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference bandied about the idea of a new Division II all-sports conference. They wanted to preserve the football future of those institutions and create a highly competitive league comprised of teams with similar sports sponsorship, similar budgets, goals and capacities to compete.
"Our belief was that, in time, that high level of quality competition within a strong conference would lead to all of our programs having the opportunity to improve," Amos said. "If the high level of competition leads the overwhelming majority of our programs to get better, then our best programs will be well tested and ready to compete at the regional and national levels."
It didn't take long after UC, West Virginia State, West Virginia Wesleyan, Concord, Fairmont State, West Liberty, Shepherd, Wheeling Jesuit and Glenville State broke away from the WVIAC and added Urbana, Notre Dame College and the University of Virginia's College at Wise. Since the MEC formed, four different teams from four different schools in four different sports played for national titles - West Liberty men's basketball and Charleston men's soccer in 2014, and Shepherd football and Wheeling Jesuit volleyball in 2015.
In the 19 years of the WVIAC, one team - the 1997 West Virginia Wesleyan women's soccer team - reached a national title game.
That shared belief in reaching for national renown was important for Jesuit volleyball coach Christy Benner and her contemporaries in this new conference. When they entered the MEC, they had specific ideas to improve their respective programs. They weren't grandiose ideas. They included paid line judges and greater flexibility in scheduling so they could play non-conference opponents that would help them improve and compete at a national level.
What Benner appreciated was that the conference didn't just pay the coaches lip service.
"I think Reid did a very good job of listening to coaches and what the coaches really feel is important for our programs to grow," Benner said, "and what other conferences in the nation are doing and what we actually should be doing that we're behind in. And I think he allowed us to grow and, in three years, we've done just that."
The MEC's formation helped boost national reputation in several sports. UC men's soccer coach Chris Grassie remembers his first year overseeing the Golden Eagles in 2011. He remembers the frustration he felt when, after winning a WVIAC title and finishing with a 13-6 record, his team was left out of the NCAA tournament. In Division II, there are no automatic qualifiers, so a conference tournament crown doesn't guarantee a tournament berth.
Of the eight teams picked in the super region bracket in which Charleston would have played, six entered that tournament with fewer wins than the Golden Eagles.
Joining the MEC helped Charleston's profile, in part, because the new league included Notre Dame.
"They were better than us in 2013," Grassie said. "So that gave us something to shoot for and the ability to play against good competition, which is what we wanted. And then Urbana went through a bit of an ownership change, and now they're funded at a level where they can compete as well."
Of the four teams picked in the 2015 NCAA Division II men's soccer Atlantic Region tournament, three - UC, Notre Dame and Urbana - were from the MEC.
"It's fabulous," Grassie said. "You know you're getting a good game. That's all they want, a good, competitive game with as many teams as you can."
Putting three men's soccer teams in the Atlantic Region bracket was just one of the MEC's 2015 milestones. It put the most teams in the NCAA softball tournament - three - and put two teams in the women's soccer tournament for the second straight year. The Mountain East put two teams in the football playoffs for the first time in a season where it struck a media deal with MetroNews to broadcast a Thursday game of the week and also was featured in an ESPN3 Division II national game of the week when Charleston hosted Concord.
Shepherd football coach Monte Cater, who led his Rams to the Division II title game for the first time in his 29 years at the team's helm, said the makeup of the MEC and the quality of the teams within helped SU in its run to the D-II final. And that quality can be found in every sport.
"It is more competitive," Cater said. "You've got to be ready every week ... and those are cliches, but you've got to be ready every week or you're going to lose that ballgame. It's great that the conference as a whole has been able to establish itself in a variety of sports. Teams from our league have been able to go ahead and get out there and advance further than we've had a chance to advance before."
Amos feels the Mountain East can continue to grow by maintaining its focus on providing an enhanced experience for its student-athletes. That can come from scholarship and academic opportunities, larger crowds and greater publicity. That growth, he said, will come from the labor and talents of everyone in the conference.
That's why Amos likes that this award is shared among the entire conference. It has taken a top-to-bottom effort from all corners - staff, school administrators, coaches and student-athletes - to reach the level of success the MEC has in such a short time.
"This form of recognition is not possible without the hard work of student-athletes at the direction of great coaches and administrators," Amos said. "The MEC has received national attention and success due to their efforts. I'm proud, as is our outstanding staff, to have the opportunity to provide support for them as they strive to compete at the highest level and garner respect in NCAA Division II circles.
"In an analogy, we have laid this foundation brick by brick ... and no small number of people could have laid enough bricks to build what we have in just 28 months of competition."