Northern Kentucky University in the Cincinnati suburb of Highland Heights, Kentucky, has announced the addition of six sports, including men’s and women’s swimming and men’s and women’s triathlon.
In addition to those aquatic and aquatic-adjacent sports, the school will add men’s volleyball and women’s stunt programs. This is NKU’s first athletics expansion since 1997, and is combined with doubling the size of the school’s track & field teams and expanding the school’s dance, cheerleading, and pep band programs.
By the 2026-2027 academic year, the athletics department will add 250 new student-athlete slots.
The additions will bring the school to 22 varsity programs and one club spot offering, with the school boasting that this puts it “on the same level as the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville, along with the rest of the state institutions throughout Kentucky.”
The program also said that it now has more sports than other Cincinnati-metro schools University of Cincinnati and Xavier.
“This is the first move in a multi-pronged enrollment strategy,” said Board Chair Rich Boehne. “It will improve the lives of even more students and support the university financially as well. It’s a win-win.”
Men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s triathlon and women’s stunt will all start competition in the 2024-25 academic year. Men’s Volleyball will be set to compete in 2025-26. Both swimming programs, women’s triathlon and women’s stunt will begin as varsity sports while men’s triathlon would start as a club sport offering.
Northern Kentucky is an NCAA Division I program with an enrollment of around 11,000 undergraduates and another 5,000 postgraduates. The school is located on a 425 acre campus in a small suburb.
NKU was founded in 1968, making it one of the youngest NCAA Division I schools in the country. The school’s athletics programs compete in the Horizon League, where currently 6 men’s and 6 women’s programs sponsor swimming & diving. Oakland University are the defending champions in both meets; there are also co-ed programs at IUPUI, Milwaukee, Youngstown State, Cleveland State, and UW Green Bay.
While there has been a surge of new college swimming programs in the last few years as part of a strategy to boost enrollment at smaller colleges, the addition of a Division I program has been more rare. Recently, Nebraska-Omaha added a men’s team to its women’s program for the 2021-2022 season, while Southern Indiana announced the addition of a men’s and women’s swimming and diving program while it was still a D2 program, but shortly thereafter announced that they would move to Division I.
NKU already has an on campus, 8-lane, 25 yard pool with separate aquatic facilities including a shallow water polo and an aqua-climbing rock wall.
Has the coach(es) been named for the Northern Kentucky Swim Team?
I don’t believe the job has been listed yet. I could be wrong.
I stand corrected, the job was posted.
Love it when they see that it is an enrollment strategy. Eastern Michigan (and others) dumped their program strictly due to desiring to finance their “revenue” sports. In EMU’s case they had 38 guys on the team, of which only 2 were from the state, with 9.9 scholarships. Their own accounting professor told them they were losing money on the approach. And worse, they kept the women’s team so still maintaining facilities.
I guess this is a wash for the state of KY as WKU does not appear to ever address bringing back their programs as they stated when suspending them.
They did address it. They aren’t brining it back.
[insert mijatovic celly celebration here]
Awesome news!
Terrific news. Especially after WKY was “suspended” 5-6 years ago.
Amazing, it’s nice seeing programs add swimming instead of making excuses to cut teams.
I was curious, so I stalked Nebraska-Omaha. I would expect a “slow build” because they’re a brand new program, but it looks like they would sweep some mid-major programs who have been around for decades. Any idea how this happens? How a brand new program can immediately step over some long-standing programs?
They are the only D1 program in Nebraska. If you want to stay in-state or close to home if you live in Kansas or Iowa, they are your top choice.
Makes sense – thank you!
I guess the University of Nebraska – Lincoln doesn’t have a team?
They only have a women’s team
Don’t see this everyday! With the amount of talent in the Cincinnati area they should have access to a decent recruiting base. Great to see