St. Thomas Athletics Director Phil Esten said Thursday that the NCAA agrees that St. Thomas “look(s) like we could be and operate like a Division I institution” and the university will know more about its fate after the NCAA convention.

The NCAA is considering a number of legislative models that would address St. Thomas’s unique situation of being invited to the Division I Summit League last October, a jump from the Division III MIAC, from which St. Thomas was “involuntarily” removed last May.

“(The NCAA felt) as if this was something they wanted to address not through exceptions, but through process,” Esten said at the Undergraduate Student Government general council meeting.

Esten noted that those models will be reviewed at the NCAA convention Jan. 22-25 in Anaheim, Calif.

“They will hopefully select one model that would allow consideration of Division III institutions to directly reclassify to Division I,” Esten said.

Esten said he suspected that St. Thomas will know more about the possible fate of the university’s athletic programs after the NCAA convention.

“My hope is that we know definitively sometime in April, which is the next time that the group convenes following the convention,” Esten said.

Esten also sought to debunk a “myth” that there are certain capacity requirements for athletic facilities or sports at the Division I level, and noted that a large number of Division I athletic programs “look a lot like (St. Thomas) from a facility standpoint.”

He gave an example on both sides of the spectrum, stating that St. Thomas’s swimming and diving facilities will be “one of the best in the Summit League,” but it would be “very difficult for us to compete in men’s and women’s ice hockey” playing at Saint Thomas Ice Arena, an arena shared with Saint Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights.

“There are no requirements from a capacity standpoint,” Esten said. “In order for us to best leverage the opportunity from a revenue generating standpoint, there may be some things we want to do from a fan amenity standpoint and from a recruiting perspective.”

In short, Esten said that “there is nothing that we have to do,” but the university will look into improving the fan and student athlete experience.

The athletics department is continuing to search for affiliate memberships for football and men’s and women’s hockey, which are sports that the Summit League does not offer.

Justin Amaker can be reached at justin.amaker@stthomas.edu.

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