| Rockhurst University is getting ready to join a new athletic conference this fall. The Hawks will become a member of the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Valley Conference for the 2005-06 academic year.
A member of the Heartland Conference since 1999, Rockhurst will be one of three new members of the GLVC, along with Drury University (Springfield , Mo.) and the University of Missouri-Rolla, while increasing the conference membership to 14 schools.
Current membership in the GLVC includes five of the league's charter members — Bellarmine University (Louisville, Ky.), Kentucky Wesleyan College (Owensboro, Ky.), Saint Joseph 's College (Rensselaer, Ind.), the University of Indianapolis (Indianapolis, Ind.) and the University of Southern Indiana (Evansville, Ind.).
The other league members include Lewis University (Romeoville, Ill.), Northern Kentucky University (Highland Heights , Ky.), Quincy University (Quincy, Ill.), Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (Edwardsville , Ill.), the University of Missouri-St. Louis (St. Louis , Mo.) and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (Kenosha , Wis.).
Frank Diskin, director of athletics for Rockhurst, said the GLVC will allow the Hawks to be able to have all 11 of their men's and women's teams compete in one conference for the first time. Rockhurst's men's and women's soccer teams have always played as an independent, while the school's first-year softball program is not playing in a conference this year.
“The GLVC is a strong Division II conference,” Diskin said. “This takes us into an area (St. Louis) where we recruit a large number of our students, in addition to opening up new areas for us in Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. These are also areas where we have a large number of our alumni.”
Competitive at both the regional and national level in 17 sports, the GLVC features the use of wood bats in regular season and conference tournament baseball games. The GLVC also sponsors the largest number of women's golf teams participating in NCAA Division II.
The GLVC has won a total of 10 NCAA Division II Basketball National Championships (i.e., nine men's titles and one woman's title). In addition, the GLVC has had a team participate in the men's basketball title game for 10 of the past 11 years.
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