UJ athletic department preparing for three-year provisional period

JAMESTOWN — One thing the University of Jamestown has to deal with in its move up to NCAA Division II is a three-year provisional period. The university will need to prove it can sustain itself as a full NCAA member for its first two seasons in the NCAA.

“It’s (the preparation has) kind of been something that’s already been put into place here over the last, I don’t know how many years you want to say, between our investments in facilities, our investments in scholarships, staffing, things like that,” Jimmies athletic director Austin Hieb said. “It’s going to be continuing to build on those things, building our staff, building and administrative staff, continuing to add to our coaching staffs. What’s kind of nice about us here at the University of Jamestown is these were things we were already doing.”

NCAA.org details why institutions have to go through the three-year period and what they have to do, saying, “The process includes opportunities for education, assessment and growth as institutions integrate the Division II philosophy, strategic positioning platform and best practices to be a model Division II institution.”

While the provisional period lasts for three seasons, Hieb said the athletic department will be able to start the process during its final NAIA season — the 2024-25 academic year.

“A lot of it will be on the compliance end, which is where some of the provisional period stuff comes from,” Hieb said. “… The NAIA does have compliance, there’s more reporting on the NCAA side. ... I like to tell people the NCAA and NAIA both have rules, their rules are just different. It’ll be more so getting ourselves accustomed to the different rules the NCAA has and the NAIA has and working with our student-athletes and our coaches and our administration on making sure we’re checking all those boxes we have to check, especially those first couple years.”

Hieb said before the provisional period gets underway, the university will look to hire a compliance administrator.

One of the things the athletic department will deal with is being unable to play in the NCAA postseason for the first two years at the higher level.

“I think initially that’s a turnoff for a competitive player when they come to a competitive program and they’re maybe used to that,” Jimmies women’s volleyball head coach Jon Hegerle said. “But the challenge is to get them past that and to see what is our program like and what is it about and certainly going to the postseason is a great experience but it’s more than just that. Is this a great school for them? Is this going to be an environment where they grow as athletes, as people, that’s gonna help them in their future? For some, maybe they can’t see past that. But for some, I’m not sure that when you look at the players that we have in the program right now, I’m not sure that getting to the postseason was one of the big selling points for them coming.”

Hegerle said he has spoken to recruits who would be coming in during the Jimmies' first year in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference in the 2025-26 academic year, but he lets them bring up the lack of postseason play first. Despite the provisional years, Hegerle said the Jimmies are exploring the possibilities of playing in the National Christian College Athletic Association national tournament for all the teams.

“I do know that it’s been a discussion with our administration that are pursuing looking into that so we do have a postseason option, whatever teams have that position option,” Hegerle said.

Not all of the Jimmies coaches are dealing with the lack of postseason play as a recruiting issue, though.

“I haven’t seen any difficulties from that yet,” Jimmies football head coach Brian Mistro said. “Is that the first thing that I bring up to a young man, probably not. Football is a different world that way because we don’t have any conference tournaments, we don’t have, if you make the top eight you’re in the tournament of the conference, if you don’t win the football league you’re not going to the playoffs. So, we would have to get to that point first before I would ever really worry about if our guys are not gonna come here because of that.”

Hieb said it depends on the team and the year on whether the Jimmies can play in the conference tournament.

The university will officially submit its application to join the NCAA on Feb. 1 and is expecting to hear back by July 2024.

“It’s going well. One of the blessings for us is that the NCAA looks a lot like the NSIC (Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference) application,” Hieb said. “So right now we’re really just refining what we already submitted to the NSIC this summer and making some tweaks to it and making sure it looks the way we want it to look when we submit it to the NCAA in February.”

The Jimmies will not be alone in this process, as NSIC commissioner Erin Lind said the conference will help the university as much as possible.

“As a conference, we’ll walk alongside them and help and guide them as appropriate,” Lind said. “ … Our conference application, which they submitted to us way back in the spring, is similar to the Division II application in terms of information gathered, the leg work that need to be advanced, the strategic approach to the change. So in terms of helping them moving forward between now and Feb. 1, when they submit the Division II application, we’re here to help their leadership in whatever fashion is necessary, if they have questions.”