Horizon League welcomes Northern Kentucky University

Effective July 1, the Northern Kentucky Norse will join Oakland, Cleveland State, Detroit-Mercy, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Illinois-Chicago, Valparaiso, Wright State and Youngstown State University as the 10th member of the Horizon League.

According to a league release, Northern Kentucky is set to compete in 17 of 19 Horizon League sports for the 2015-16 academic year. The omissions are men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

“I think Northern Kentucky is a great fit that meets our profile for an institution, being a large, urban university in our geographic footprint providing a natural travel partner with Wright State,” Oakland’s athletic director Jeff Konya said.

“We made the move to Division 1 in order to align with similar aspirational institutions,”  Northern Kentucky President Geoffrey Mearns said, per Bill Potter of the Horizon League.

“The Horizon League member schools are located in areas that are ideal for student recruitment.”

Mearns said the move reduces travel costs and will help engage the more than 14,000 alumni that live in the states covered by the Horizon League.

Konya, who is heading into his second year as Oakland’s athletic director, said the addition of Northern Kentucky would help Oakland similarly.

“It opens up another market for our institution, Northern Kentucky is in metro-Cincinnati area and so as we play them and we have a focused and coordinated marketing game plan for the Golden Grizzlies, hopefully that will lead to our brand penetrating to some degree a newer geographic area of footprint for us,” Konya said.

“From our perspective, that could be a nice windfall for OU once we’re able to tell our story in another market in our geographic region.”