✈ If It’s Tuesday. It Might Be D.C. Safe travels.

🎶 Your Morning Pick-Me-Up. Lithium | Nirvana

🗞 In Today’s Playbook. The 2026 NCAA Convention. Colleges Too Often Drop The Ball On Student-Athlete Mental Health. Still The Ones. Statesmen, Falcons Top Puck Polls. Mites on Ice Event Turns Into Brawl

🗓 What’s Happening Today. The DIII Student-Athlete Advisory Committee concludes a two-day meeting, while the DIII Management Council also has a get-together in Washington, D.C.

✅ Convention Week Special. D3Playbook is free this week for all. If you like what you see, please support us with a subscription.

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The NCAA Convention is the Association’s annual gathering that brings together delegates and leaders from all three divisions for four days of education, legislation and celebration. All official Convention activities — including educational sessions, business meetings and awards presentations — will be held Tuesday, Jan. 13, through Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.

Tuesday
Management Council, 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Athletic Direct Report Programming, 2 - 5:30 p.m.
Student Immersion Program, 2 - 4:30 p.m.
Association-Wide Programming, 2:30 - 4:45 p.m.

Wednesday
Commissioners Association, 8 - 11:30 a.m.
Athletic Direct Report Professional Development, 8 - 3:30 p.m.
Education Session: Connecting With Generation Z, 8:45 - 9:45 a.m.
Presidents Council, 9:30 - Noon
Education Session: Building Campus-Wide Relationships For Athletics Success, 1 - 2 p.m.
Chancellors/Presidents Forum, 1:30 - 3 p.m.
Special Olympics Unified Sports Activity, 1:30 - 3 p.m.
Education Session: AI and Division III Athletic Departments, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
ADR reception, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
State of College Sports and NCAA Honors, 5 - 6:30 p.m.
Welcome Reception, 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
LGBTQ of the Year Award Celebration, 6:45 - 8:15 p.m.
DIII Student Social Mixer, 8:30 - 10 p.m.

Coming Tomorrow. A first look at the Convention proposals.

“The stress of maximizing financial returns from their athletic abilities while navigating the recent changes in college athletics can harm student-athletes, a population that has experienced increasing mental health issues for decades, with the rates of student-athlete suicides doubling over the last 20 years.

Despite changes at the NCAA, conference and institutional levels to improve access to, education about and training for mental health services, they remain insufficient to meet the growing needs of athletes.”

» Why It Matters. “Even before the recent changes in college sports, student-athletes’ mental health was at greater risk than that of other students. In addition to the stressors of academic life, student-athletes face sport-related factors such as injuries, poor performance, overtraining and maintaining eligibility.”

» Of Note. “Academic challenges, such as trying to balance school with sports schedules, are the single greatest issue contributing to negative mental health for student-athletes.”

» Reality Check. ““Only about half of the student-athletes surveyed in the NCAA’s well-being study said they believed that their institutions and coaches prioritized mental health. And many athletes do not seek help because of a stigma perpetuated by an athletic culture that expects them to be resilient and tough.”

Just like they were at the start of the season, the Trinity (Conn.) men and the New York University women sit atop the latest D3hoops.com basketball rankings.

» Top 10 (M). 1-Trinity CT (14-0); 2-Chicago (11-1); 3-Emory (11-1); 4-Mount Union (15-0); 5-Randolph-Macon (12-1); 6-Mary Washington (13-1); 7-St. Thomas (12-1); 8-Montclair State (14-0); 9-Claremont-M-S (14-0); 10-Redlands (11-2) | Complete Top 25

» Top 10 (W). 1-NYU (12-0); 2-Scranton (13-0); 3-UW-Oshkosh (14-0); 4-Smith (12-0); 5-Johns Hopkins (13-0); 6-Washington and Lee (13-0); 7-UW-Whitewater (12-2); 8-Bowdoin (11-1); 9-Emory (11-1); 10-John Carroll (12-1) | Complete Top 25

See above, but insert Hobart and UW-River Falls as the No. 1 ice hockey teams in the latest USCHO rankings.

» USCHO Top 10 (M). 1-Hobart (14-0); 2-Aurora (13-2); 3-St. Norbert (10-4-1); 4-Hamilton (10-1-2); 5-Oswego (9-2-1); 6-Adrian (10-5); 7-Endicott (11-1-1); 8-U. of New England (10-4); 9-Curry (9-4); 10-Babson (10-2-2) | Complete Top 15

» USCHO Top 10 (W). 1-UW-River Falls (13-1); 2-Amherst (9-0-2); 3-Augsburg (10-2-1); 4-Middlebury (9-1-2); 5-Nazareth (14-0); 6-Hamline (11-2); 7-Adrian (11-4); 8-Norwich (12-2); 9-UW-Eau Claire (12-5); 10-Endicott (8-4-1) | Complete Top 15

» Facilities. “MIT has announced a state-of-the-art facility upgrade and turf renovation of the Fran O'Brien Baseball Field and Briggs Softball Field. The current natural grass and dirt playing surface on both the baseball and softball fields will be replaced with the installation of over 185,000 square feet of synthetic turf, including bullpens and batting cages for both programs.”

“A Mites on Ice event featuring players from a Lancaster area youth hockey club devolved into a brawl between players between periods of a Hershey Bears game on Saturday.

The Hershey Bears, like many hockey teams, feature Mites on Ice events in which youth hockey players compete against each other between periods of the game. However, on Saturday during an AHL contest between the Bears and the Cleveland Monsters at Giant Center, intermission entertainment turned into a melee between players of the Central Penn Panthers Youth Ice Hockey Club.

Videos posted to social media show players from the club’s 8U team shoving each other onto the ice and throwing wild punches at both teammates and opposing players. Both teams during the intermission game were made up of Central Penn Panthers players.”

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