St. Thomas invited to join NCAA Division I Summit League
The University of St. Thomas has received an invitation to move up to an NCAA Division I athletics conference, after being booted from the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference earlier this year.
St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan announced in a letter Friday that the university applied and now has been invited to join the Summit League. The Tommies currently are a Division III school.
"Joining the Summit League would be a unique and exciting opportunity for St. Thomas, allowing us to significantly expand our impact and reach," Sullivan wrote.
The Summit League is based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and currently includes nine schools — including North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota and South Dakota State.
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There are a few unresolved issues, including the fact that the Summit League does not include football or hockey.
"As a result, St. Thomas would actively pursue affiliate membership opportunities for these programs in other Division I conferences," school officials wrote in a post on the St. Thomas website.
Such splits aren't unusual among Minnesota schools. Minnesota Duluth, for example, competes in the Division II Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference for most sports, but in the Division I National Collegiate Hockey Conference for men's hockey and the Division I Western Collegiate Hockey Association for women's hockey.
Another catch is that the NCAA usually does not allow Division III schools like St. Thomas to move directly to Division I. Sullivan wrote that St. Thomas will seek a waiver from the NCAA.
"If the NCAA ultimately grants the waiver request, St. Thomas will begin competing in the Summit League in fall 2021, after two full final years in the MIAC," Sullivan wrote.
St. Thomas is one of seven founding members of the MIAC, but in May, the conference announced the Tommies would be "involuntarily removed." The 13-member league is made up of mostly small private colleges and universities in Minnesota, including St. John's, Augsburg, Bethel, Hamline, Macalester and Carleton.
At the time, MIAC Commissioner Dan McKane said presidents from the other schools felt the size of St. Thomas' student body — much larger than the others in the conference — made it harder for small schools to compete.
"If you have a larger institution, you have more student athletes to choose from. You're able to utilize enrollment in different ways. And typically, enrollment brings more funding. So I think that was another catalyst as well," he said.
St. Thomas has dominated the conference in football and other sports in recent years.
Sullivan wrote that an advisory committee worked over the summer to determine the next steps for St. Thomas, and that work led the school's Board of Trustees to apply to join the Summit League.
"We are proud of our strong record of athletic performance and even prouder that our student-athletes are recognized for their great work as scholars in the classroom and as good citizens in our community," she wrote. "Those values will remain paramount no matter which athletics conference we ultimately join."