NILES — Over the past 48 hours, Niles athletic coaches have had to get used to the fact that beginning next fall, they will no longer be competing in the SMAC, but will join the BCS Athletic Conference.

The Niles sports teams will have some adjusting to do as they go from competing against mostly larger schools in the SMAC to being the biggest school in the BCS.

Many of the coaches see plenty of positives in making the move, especially the part that cuts down on travel.

For sports such as baseball, softball and soccer, the Vikings already play regular-season games against many of the schools in the BCS. Those sports, along with boys and girls basketball, as well as volleyball, have plenty of dates available to schedule games against bigger schools or to keep teams they are already playing on the schedule.

For first-year soccer coach Abel Fonseca, the news of the conference switch came just before his SMAC match against Battle Creek Central. The Vikings faced Buchanan at the VanDenBerg Invitational and could have played Brandywine had the Bobcats won their semifinal match. Niles also played Bridgman in a regular-season match.

“Overall, I think it will be a confidence builder for the boys,” Fonseca said. “We will be able to play teams that match our skill level and get some more wins that help us build for the state tournament. We also have the opportunity to keep those SMAC rivalries we have had for years and pick up other teams we wouldn’t normally play.”

Veteran Niles volleyball coach Jenny Nate has never known anything but the SMAC, both as a player and now as a coach.

She has mixed feelings about the switch, but thinks the change could be good for Niles moving forward.

“We are embracing the new changes, and our mission, as always, will be to focus on all of our Niles athletes, she said. “In the volleyball program. We will continue to work hard training and building with a focus on playing at the highest level of play.

“While I will miss being a part of the SMAC Conference, I was a player for Niles in the SMAC years ago and have been coaching in it for years, we are looking forward to playing some of the local teams in the new conference who we don’t get to play very often, and we are excited that the majority of our volleyball schedule will remain the same. We also like the idea of less travel time on weeknights — that will be good for our athletes and their families. Even though our actual conference matches will change, our tournament and quad schedules will remain the same, so we will continue to face many of the same SMAC teams and other powerhouses throughout the state. Ultimately, we will get the best of both worlds.”

Baseball coach Mike Vota also sees the positive of less travel and playing teams that very familiar to area fans.

“I think is it great for the community and the kids in the surrounding communities,” he said. “It is going to bring back more local games and local rivalries, which will be good for the stands. It will be good for the coffee shops on Monday morning after some football and things like that. I think there are a lot of pieces missing because we have been in a conference with so much travel.”

Vota said he does not envision a huge schedule change.

“We play a lot of those schools already, and we still will have plenty of room in our schedule for non-conference games, which will still give us the Indiana schools that we play and maybe some of the SMAC schools because we have a good relationship, and it is good baseball, so we may still play a lot of those teams.”

The sport that will be most affected by the switch is, of course, football. Due to the current playoff system and the new system that will replace it beginning in the fall of 2020, schools have been shuffling from conference to conference for several decades.