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Madison — The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference is in danger of losing UW-Superior, perhaps as early as the 2015-'16 academic year.

UW-Superior, founded in 1893 and a member of the WIAC (formerly WSUC) for more than 100 years, has applied to join the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference.

The UMAC has eight full members, seven of which are in Minnesota, and five associate members that compete in football only. The lone Wisconsin school in the UMAC is Northland College in Ashland.

According to Corey Borchardt, commissioner of the UMAC, the league's Council of Presidents expects to vote on the application before June 1.

"That would be a final decision," Borchardt said Monday. "And with scheduling ... the very earliest they would be admitted would be 2015-'16."

The departure of UW-Superior would leave the WIAC with eight members. The Yellowjackets would continue to participate in the WIAC in men's and women's ice hockey because the UMAC does not sponsor those sports.

The WIAC sport that could suffer the most damage is baseball. If UW-Superior leaves, the conference will have only six schools that sponsor baseball. That is below the NCAA minimum of seven needed for a league to get an automatic bid in the Division III tournament.

"When they first discussed this with me my first reaction was: 'Why would you be doing this?'" WIAC commissioner Gary Karner said. "But when I looked at the circumstances and broke it all down, it makes a lot of sense."

A move to the UMAC would cut travel costs and allow UW-Superior to compete against schools with similar enrollments.

According to Karner, UW-Superior's trips in the WIAC range from 147 miles to UW-Stout, to 368 miles to UW-Whitewater. In the UMAC, UW-Superior would have trips ranging from about 5 miles to 255 miles.

"They have three trips in the WIAC that are more than 300 miles," Karner said. "Their average trip would be 186 compared to 247 in our league.

"That doesn't sound like a lot but when you multiply that over the number of trips in all the sports it is significant."

UW-Superior's enrollment has slipped below 2,500. That is by far the lowest in the WIAC. The enrollment of the other eight WIAC schools ranges from a low of 6,819 (UW-River Falls) to a high of 13,513 (UW-Oshkosh).

The disparity in enrollment is significant because of segregated fees. Those fees are charged to all students and help support services, programs and facilities on campus.

"It's not even in the ballpark," Karner said of UW-Superior's enrollment compared to other WIAC schools.

UW-Superior would have the third-highest enrollment in the UMAC, behind only Northwestern of St. Paul (3,000) and St. Scholastica (2,877).

"They're in the higher end of the UMAC," Karner said, noting 52% of UW-Superior's athletes come from Minnesota and only 30% come from Wisconsin. "Minnesota is obviously their feeder ground, not only in athletics but also from an institutional perspective.

"In looking to increase their enrollment, they're going to be looking more at the state of Minnesota than at Wisconsin."

UW-Superior sponsors 13 sports — six for men and seven for women. The men's sports are baseball, basketball, cross country, ice hockey, soccer and track and field. The women's sports are softball, basketball, cross country, ice hockey, soccer, track and field and volleyball.

Superior, which dropped football after the 1992 season, has enjoyed little success in the WIAC in "major" sports.

The Yellowjackets won six league titles in football, but the last came in 1946. They won only four titles in men's basketball, the last in 1941.

Men's hockey has won the league title outright five times and shared the title twice, most recently in 2011.

The Yellowjackets have won just one baseball title, in 1966. They finished fifth in each of the last four seasons but had the worst record or tied for the worst record in the league for 14 seasons before that (1996-2009).

"I've actually become an advocate of the move for their benefit," Karner said. "If I look at it from a conference perspective, I hate to lose a school.

"But when I look at what is best for Superior, it just makes a lot of sense."

If UW-Superior is accepted to the UMAC, Karner has no plans to add another school.

"When you look at the landscape there are no independent schools in our area," he said. "And getting somebody to join our conference, given how competitive we are (nationally), is highly unlikely ...

"There's just nobody else out there."