America East has accepted the resignations of the University of Delaware, Drexel, Hofstra and Towson effective June 30 but those schools will remain associate members in men’s and women’s soccer and field hockey for the fall.

In addition, Drexel and Towson will be associate members in volleyball while Delaware and Hofstra will compete in the Colonial Athletic Association to honor a previous arrangement in that sport.

The four schools were originally going to leave for the Colonial Athletic Association after the 2001-2002 season but the men’s basketball coaches at the other six schools were among those who wanted them to leave a year early.

Delaware and Towson joined America East in 1991; Hofstra joined in selected sports in 1995 and in all remaining sports a year later; and Towson became a conference member in 1996.

“The coaches could understand keeping the four schools around so they could fill out their commitment but they couldn’t understand going back to Delaware for the tournament and showcasing the conference on TV and for the Delaware fans,” said America East assistant commissioner Matt Bourque last week. “It also gave Delaware a huge home-court advantage.”

Delaware’s Bob Carpenter Center has housed the tourney’s first three rounds for the last six years and was under contract for next season’s tourney.

Delaware has also been the site of the baseball tournament for the last four years.

The four schools agreed to be associate members in the three fall sports for scheduling purposes. America East will be adding New York schools Albany and Stony Brook in all sports in the fall and Binghamton, another New York school, has also expressed interest in joining America East.

The presidents of the six New England-based America East schools – Boston University, Hartford, Maine, New Hampshire, Northeastern and Vermont – will discuss further membership issues at an April 13 meeting.

“The conference made a very good decision to keep them as associate members in soccer because, at this late stage, it would have been very, very difficult to replace them on the schedule,” said Maine men’s soccer coach Travers Evans.

The America East men’s and women’s soccer tournament fields have been expanded from four to six teams with the inclusion of the CAA-bound quartet and the addition of Stony Brook and Albany.

“Adding two teams to the tournament field will make things a lot more interesting,” said Maine women’s soccer coach Scott Atherley. “The parity in the conference has been very good and now we’ll have two more [tournament] slots. It’ll make things more competitive.”

The top two teams will receive first-round byes with the third seed playing the sixth seed and No. 4 facing No. 5 in the quarterfinals.

The semifinals and final will be held at the site of the higher seeded team.

Bourque said Wednesday the league has put together a tentative eight-team schedule for basketball but they will wait to release the winter schedules until after the April 13 president’s meeting.

“We want to wait and see what they come back with first,” said Bourque. “They may add a team (Binghamton).”

He also said the league’s athletic directors have always preferred a one-division league and a balanced schedule over a two-division setup with an unbalanced schedule.

Maine women’s basketball coach Sharon Versyp said “There has been speculation for a long time. I wish they would have just made that decision from the get-go. I think it really puts the athletic department in limbo. We know the ramifications of people leaving at the last second.

“It became difficult for us to add any people to the schedule,” she added. “We had two gaps in the schedule and now we have four with them leaving. Some of those teams we could keep on playing, but they’re booked [because of so many teams in the CAA]. It’s a tough situation for everyone.”

Another area of concern was the loss of the automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament which would result if the number of teams in a particular sport dropped below six.

“The only two sports that would happen in are men’s and women’s lacrosse,” said Bourque.

America East sponsors championship competition in 21 men’s and women’s sports.