Dr. Reinhold Hill
The city of Columbus might soon be home to an NAIA program.
IUPUC plans to submit an application next week to become a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics beginning with the 2022-23 school year. Reinhold Hill, the school’s vice-chancellor and dean, said the plan to apply to the NAIA was in place prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve been talking about it for a few years,” Hill said. “The pandemic definitely put things on hold for us. It provides real opportunity to develop different connections to IUPUC that we’re not currently providing.”
In past years, IUPUC has fielded a club co-ed cross-country team, as well as a men’s basketball team. Hill said baseball, softball and men’s and women’s cross-country would be the first sports to go intercollegiate next school year, with men’s and women’s golf possibly to follow after that.
“We have a longstanding club sport in cross-country, so we’re interested in adding that to our intercollegiate competition,” Hill said. “There are some challenges with intercollegiate basketball in our area, including regulation-sized courts. But we also need large enough team sizes to help on the enrollment side and on the revenue side.”
Hill said he is working with different partners in the community to utilize existing community facilities. He hopes to have plans finalized by February for a potential NAIA site visit.
IUPUC currently has 1,051 students. The average NAIA school has about 1,400.
“There are several factors influencing our interest in intercollegiate athletics,” Hill said. “Our institutional size aligns with the size of NCAA schools. We’re on the smaller size, but it aligns well with IU’s core values, the character-driven values. Several of IU’s other regional campuses already participate in intercollegiate athletics, which makes it a good fit for us, as well.”
Hill said he will soon be posting the athletics director position. The AD would then hire coaches, who would recruit athletes.
“The big difference between our earlier club sport activities is that our coaches will be recruiting student-athletes to play rather than relying on our student body,” Hill said.
Hill noted that IUPUC has received strong individual and corporate support for an athletics program at the school.
“There’s been strong philanthropic support from the community to get this off the ground,” Hill said. “We are definitely excited about moving forward with our application and participating in intercollegiate athletics in the future.”
