And then there was one.

The North Star Conference will lose two more of its charter members following this spring’s softball championships when Dayton and Notre Dame leave for the Midwestern Cities Conference next year.

DePaul is the only original NSC member left from when the conference was organized in the spring of 1983. NIU, Marquette and Valparaiso also remain while Akron, Cleveland State, Illinois-Chicago and Wisconsin-Green Bay will join next season to give the NSC eight members.

NSC President Jean Ponsetto said dissatisfaction with the NSC was not the reason Dayton and Notre Dame are leaving the conference. She said the MCC requires its members to include men’s and women’s sports.

“I think if you could ask both schools if they could keep their women’s sports in the NSC and move the men’s to the MCC, they would do it,” Ponsetto said.

Ponsetto said the move away from the NSC began two years ago when the MCC began requiring participation by women’s sports. When the NSC was formed, the MCC was not offering championships for women.

For Dayton the move to the MCC was made for logistical reasons according to the university’s Associate Director of Athletics Elaine Dreidame.

“Our closest opponents in the NSC are Valparaiso and Notre Dame who are 5 1/2 hours away,” Dreidame said. “It’s fine for the men’s basketball team to travel all over the Midwest, but not for the lower-budgeted sports like volleyball and softball.”

Dreidame, the former president of the NSC, said the men’s basketball program supports all the other sports at Dayton and the school was anxious to find a conference for that squad.

“From a total university perspective, the MCC took care of our needs,” Dreidame said.

The MCC bent the rules somewhat for Notre Dame allowing the university to join except for its men’s basketball team which will remain independent.

Notre Dame Assistant Athletic Director Brian Boulac said his school was interested in “finding a home for our non-revenue men’s sports.”

Boulac said the university agonized over the decision to leave the NSC.

“We were instrumental in developing the NSC,” Boulac said. “Moving from the NSC to the MCC for our women was a tough decision, but for the overall university it was good for us.”

Despite the departure of Notre Dame and Dayton, Boulac said the NSC “is going to be a strong conference,” and he hopes the good relationship between NIU and Notre Dame in volleyball will continue.

Ponsetto said all the NSC’s original members (DePaul, Notre Dame, Detroit, Dayton, Evansville, Butler, Loyola, and Xavier) except for DePaul will be MCC members next year.

Ponsetto said the NSC requires a member school to give at least a one-year notice to the conference if it intends to leave. She said both Dayton and Notre Dame met this requirement.

“It was basically a decision made by the administrations at those universities that would benefit their programs,” Ponsetto said.