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Frontier Conference offers 7 schools applications for admission

By By Tom Wylie & Jason Nitschke

Story Created: Sep 27, 2010 at 7:19 PM MDT

Story Updated: Sep 27, 2010 at 7:19 PM MDT

WHITEFISH The Frontier Conference will offer seven schools an opportunity to apply for admission. Frontier Commissioner Kent Paulson says the four remaining schools of the Dakota Athletic Conference, Southern Oregon, Menlo College, and Azusa Pacific will receive applications.

"We're excited about what each of those teams might have to offer," Paulson said.

In August, the Dakota Athletic Conference initially voted to consolidate to a five-team league after Black Hills State, Minot State, and South Dakota School of Mines elected to move up from the NAIA to NCAA Division II. But after Dakota State elected to become an NAIA independent, DAC officials approached the Frontier regarding possibilities of a merger or joint-scheduling agreement.

The remaining DAC schools are Dickinson State, Jamestown College, Mayville State, and Valley City State.

The Frontier Conference will evaluate the applications for admission at it's league meetings in December before moving forward with formal offers.

Paulson said the timetable for expansion depends on how many schools the Frontier chooses to add.

"We'll see how that fits with our present conferencing," Paulson said.

If two to three teams are selected, scheduling would begin for the fall of 2011-2012. If four to seven teams are added, changes to the current structure of the Frontier Conference likely wouldn't take effect until the 2012-2013 school year.

"We could have as much as a 13-team football conference. We could move up to a 10-team basketball-volleyball conference," Paulson said. "There are a lot of different exciting possibilities for us."

The jewel of expansion possibilities would be Azusa Pacific. The southern California university is ranked in all six fall sports. The Cougars are currently the number one team in women's soccer, number two in women's cross country, number seven in women's volleyball, number 12 in men's soccer, number 14 in football, and number 16 in men's cross country.

Two other schools are ranked in the current Top 25 football poll: #10 Dickinson State and #24 Menlo.

The Frontier Conference is comprised of nine member institutions from four western states: Carroll College (Helena, MT), Montana Western (Dillon, MT), University of Great Falls (Great Falls, MT), Montana State-Northern (Havre, MT), Rocky Mountain (Billings, MT), Montana Tech (Butte, MT), Lewis-Clark State (Lewiston, ID), Eastern Oregon (La Grande, OR), and Westminster (Salt Lake City, UT).

Frontier members compete in as many as 13 different sports: football, basketball, cross country, track and field, golf, soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball, wrestling, rodeo, lacrosse and skiing.

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