The North Atlantic Conference, pending approval by the NCAA’s Executive Committee, will receive its first automatic qualifier to the 48-team NCAA Baseball Tournament this spring.

The NCAA Baseball Committee has passed a proposal that will give an automatic qualifier to the NAC Tournament champion. The Executive Committee is expected to decide on the proposal in January.

Forty-eight teams qualify for the NCAA Baseball Tournament, 24 via automatics and 24 more as at-large selections.

One of the automatic berths opened up when the East Coast Conference dissolved. But Dave Keilitz, the athletic director at Central Michigan University and the chairman of the baseball committee, said it isn’t fair to say the NAC received the automatic because of the East Coast Conference’s dissolution.

“We felt the NAC deserved an automatic,” said Keilitz. “They may well have received one even if the East Coast Conference hadn’t dissolved. The addition of Delaware to the league has been a real plus and the league has shown over the last three or four years, with the upgrading of their schedules and the job they’ve done as a league, that they deserve one.”

The NAC’s adminstrators and athletic directors decided to leave the ECAC Tournament – the winner of the ECAC Tournament receives an automatic – and have its own league tournament next spring. All eight teams will qualify with best-of-three quarterfinal series followed by a four-team, double-elimination event.

“I’m relieved,” said University of Maine Coach John Winkin. “I didn’t like the idea of going through the season knowing that even if you won the conference tournament, there was no guarantee you’d receive a (NCAA) berth. This is a very good break for us. I think strength of schedule was a key for our league.”

In addition to Maine, which has always played an impressive national schedule, NAC schools such as Northeastern and Hartford have significantly upgraded their schedules.

“We got one because we deserve one,” said NAC Commissioner Stu Haskell. “We had a good case for one last year, but our case was much stronger this year. It took a terrific lobbying effort. We spent a great deal of time on this.”

Haskell added that the NAC was the 14th-best baseball conference in the country last season based on the power-index ratings.