AACC’s women’s basketball team switched from varsity to club status for the 2024-2025 season.

Head coach Lionel Makell said some players did not meet the Athletic Department’s requirement for grade-point averages.

“We had to go club just, you know, because of transfers and academics,” Makell  said. For club status, “none of that stuff is factored in.”

“It’s probably the most difficult decision I’ve had since I’ve been here in my 12 years,” Makell said.

A club, compared with a varsity sport, has no post-season playoffs or awards ceremonies,  Makell  said. The club is still playing against Division II teams, but those games do not count as wins and losses for the other squad.

The players said they hardly noticed a difference.

“Initially I thought competition would have changed,” forward Ayannah Gorham, a second-year business student, said. “But that didn’t change. I think that was my biggest concern.”

Gorham said she didn’t realize that women’s basketball was a club until a month into the season.

“They play their full schedule of the same opponents that they would’ve played had they stayed varsity,” Duane Herr, AACC’s athletic director, said.

Herr said he expects the women’s team to make varsity status again next year.Forward Holly Wall, a second-year communications student, said she wasn’t fazed by the switch in status.