By Leonard E. ColvinChief ReporterNew Journal and GuideA decade after it arrived in Norfolk, this year’s Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Basketball Tourney got underway on March 8 in the Norfolk Scope Arena, climaxing with the men’s and women’s championship games broadcast on March 11.The tournament winner receives an automatic invitation to represent the MEAC in the 2023 NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.Headquartered in Norfolk, Va., the MEAC is made up of eight Historically Black institutions across the Mid-Eastern Atlantic coastline: Coppin State University, Delaware State University, Howard University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State University, Norfolk State University, North Carolina Central University, and South Carolina State University.Each year, the MEAC Basketball tournament gives the organization a chance to showcase the talent of its HBCUs’ basketball male and female basketball teams.This is the 52nd annual tourney and the 22nd that Sonja O. Stills has experienced.But it is the second one Stills has overseen as the Conference Commissioner, having ascended to that position early last year, after a long time as the organization’s CFO. She is the Conference’s first woman commissioner.Commissioner Stills proclaims the state of the MEAC union is strong, despite the unique challenges facing all college sports leagues.“It is a time to show off the commitment of the Chancellors and Presidents of those eight institutions to our conference,” said Stills. “It is a big commitment that has allowed it to show its strength and our long strategy to provide resources for our student-athletes not only for their experiences in sports but academically. We are also providing resources to insure their personal and emotional well-being.”Stills said that one of the challenges the MEAC leadership faces is questions about the size of the conference and its sustainability.“There is this disinformation that the conference should fold because it only has eight schools,” Stills said during a recent pre-conference interview with the GUIDE. “But they do not understand that we are a conference of eight elite schools.”She asserted, “Just like the Ivy League, we have eight elite schools. Are they asking the Ivy League to fold? No.”Stills said that the MEAC, which used to have 12 schools, has had to realign recently because schools such as Hampton have left for other conferences.She said the conference is looking at adding members.But she said if any school applies, “and there will be,” they must be able to sustain themselves “financially and meet other academic and infrastructural standards.”She said the fact that the MEAC only has eight schools “makes us stronger, provides more revenue for its current members to share, makes us nimble, and travel and other operational costs are lower.”Before she became Commissioner, Stills was a respected well-known professional executive in the MEAC operation for the past 20-plus years.She is the first female Commissioner in the conference’s history, as well as the f