The Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) has announced schedule changes for the 2010-11 academic year in the sports of football, volleyball, and basketball. The changes made adjust the lost games incurred from the closing of Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, on June 30, 2010. The GPAC is now a 12 team conference for 2010-11.

  "With the loss of Dana College the league needed to look at these three sports immediately and adjustments were made to gain back the lost games because of the unbalanced conference schedule these sports play," said GPAC Commissioner Corey Westra. "We needed to use the membership numbers we have in place to fill the open spots on the schedule at this late date instead of our schools scrambling for extra dates." "We also wanted our conference schedule games to be even for all the teams in the league," added Westra.
  In football the GPAC will remain at ten games for this fall. The schedule will now be a true round robin format with all 11 football schools playing each other. Each school gained back the opponent that they were not going to play originally in 2010. The league schedule dates did not change. The 2010 season will still open on Saturday, September 4, and continue eleven weeks until Saturday, November 13. Three GPAC schools will have non-conference games and those dates were not affected by the schedule changes. Midland Lutheran will play at Dakota State on August 28, Briar Cliff at Waldorf on September 11, and Concordia at Peru State on September 25, 2010. All homecoming and alumni home dates that were set by each member school were protected in the new 2010 schedule adjustments.
  Volleyball has been adjusted in order to keep the 16 matches that were in place for 2010. For scheduling purposes the league was split six and six with one half of the league playing double round robin and single round robin with other half and vice versa. One group of standings will be kept in the conference and seeding for the conference tournament determined from those standings. Only the conference tournament champion will receive an automatic berth to the NAIA National Championship for volleyball (see below).
  Basketball was adjusted back to 18 games for all of the conference schools for the 2010-11 season. Just as with volleyball, the league was split six and six with one half of the league playing double round robin and single round robin with other half and vice versa. In basketball two additional games against the other half of the conference were added to total 18 conference dates. One group of standings will be kept in the conference and seeding for the conference tournament determined from those standings. The GPAC regular season champion will gain an automatic berth to the NAIA National Championship for basketball (see below).
  The GPAC Volleyball and Basketball Tournaments will feature eleven teams this year with the one-five seeds receiving opening round byes. Each tournament will feature ten total matches/games.
  With the loss of Dana the GPAC will lose some second automatic berths to the NAIA National Championships.

Here is breakdown of the current NAIA National Championship bids for the GPAC in 2010-11:

New schedules for 2010-11 GPAC football, volleyball, and basketball are available below.  Schedules for soccer and softball will have the Dana double-header removed for this year. Baseball will look at their 2011 schedule and potential adjustments to the weekend double-header format may be made to even the schedule. The conference will address immediately new schedules for 2011-12 and beyond. Visit the GPAC website for future schedule announcements.