In a crowded Triangle sports scene, Durham thinks it has found its niche
With only two NAIA schools in North Carolina, neither anywhere near the Triangle, the athletic association of very small colleges outside the NCAA umbrella isn’t typically on the Triangle radar. That’s part of what made it a target for Marcus Manning, the executive director of the Durham Sports Commission, when the football championship came up for bid.
Saturday, Durham County Stadium will host two Iowa schools — Grand View and Morningside — as they play for a national title. There’s also an all-star game for NAIA seniors on Friday, and Durham will host both again in 2022.
It’s precisely the kind of event that can help Durham secure its own niche in a crowded Triangle sports landscape. Finding different ways to use the renovated 8,500-seat county stadium is a big part of that.
“It’s a great opportunity as we move forward,” said Manning, who was the athletic director at Centenary College in Louisiana before joining the DSC in October. “As we talk about future events, utilizing this stadium could be a gold mine for us on a lot of different fronts. It allows us to talk about a lot of opportunities as we move forward and you look at different events we could bring here.”
There is, in a bit of an understatement, a lot happening on the Triangle sports scene, in every month of the year. Beyond the ACC schools, beyond the Carolina Hurricanes, beyond the NC Courage and Durham Bulls and Carolina Mudcats, beyond all the other colleges and the high schools, there’s a constant drumbeat of traveling and visiting sports: NCAA events, youth tournaments, even eSports.
The Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance has a long and successful history of bidding and hosting NCAA championships -- the Men’s College Cup was at WakeMed Soccer Park last weekend, the 16th men’s or women’s soccer championship held there and the third this calendar year -- in Wake County and there’s even an ongoing bid for the 2027 World University Games from the Triangle Sports Commission.
Amid all that, the Durham Sports Commission is a relative newcomer to the scene, founded in 2016, and part of its mandate is to find a place for Durham. So far, in addition to the NAIA, that has included partnering with Duke during the last NCAA bid cycle to land fencing (2023) and field hockey (2024, 2025) championships and hosting the 2019 USA Track and Field youth outdoor championships. There’s still probably another year or so to go until the NCAA starts soliciting bids for 2026-27 and beyond.
“What’s impressed me is you have a feeling that it’s a great sports ecosystem, I like to call it, here in the Triangle area,” Manning said. “It’s awesome. Everywhere I go, having that opportunity to talk sports. This community, this area, this region, they live and breathe sports. I feel like there’s so much growth opportunity here in the area.”
With a different mix of venues from other parts of the Triangle, Manning’s priorities include bringing the ACC baseball tournament back to Durham Bulls Athletic Park, exploring new uses for Durham County Stadium — Lacrosse? Ultimate? Cheerleading? — finding more ways to partner with Duke and N.C. Central and reaching out to organizations that might not have considered the Triangle in the past.
Like the NAIA.
This won’t be the first time the NAIA football title game has been played in North Carolina, but it’s been a while. Elon hosted (and won) in 1980 and 1981 and Gardner-Webb hosted (and lost) in 1992. Since 1997, it has been played at a neutral site, but never in N.C.
“We’ve identified both traditional and nontraditional sports and reached directly out to the governing bodies to have conversations about what they’re looking for,” Manning said. “We’ve also taken this time during COVID to really ask the questions, ‘What have you done in the past? What have you sort of rethought looking toward the future?’ Those are great conversations we’ve had with national governing bodies. We want to be a championship hub and we’re going to be aggressive recruiting and retaining events to Durham.”
