UNBC's soccer and basketball teams won't get the chance to ease onto the Canada West landscape at a second-tier level. Instead, they'll try to run with the big dogs right away.
Even though there has been much talk about dividing the Canada West Universities Athletic Association into tiers as the association goes through an expansion process, such a division won't happen in 2012-13, which will be the first season of competition for the Northern Timberwolves squads.
"The process is still ongoing," UNBC athletics director Jason Kerswill said on Monday. "There has been a task force with five university presidents and five university athletics directors that has been tasked with putting suggestions and ideas forward to Canada West and hopefully then to [Canadian Interuniversity Sport] about restructuring and making a different division -- a high-performance type of division.
"Whether that's going to happen in the near future remains to be seen. But it won't be anything that affects us in the next year, that's for sure."
Being immediately competitive against long-established programs like the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria will be extremely difficult for the Timberwolves teams. However, the UNBC athletes will have the opportunity to test themselves against the elite players in their respective sports, and fans will get the chance to witness levels of play that have never before been seen in Prince George.
"It will be tremendous for the UNBC community, the community as a whole and the entire region, actually," Kerswill said. "We're going to have the best and brightest student-athletes in Canada coming to Prince George, which is exciting for everybody.
"Take a look at the minor basketball system in Prince George and the minor soccer system," Kerswill added. "We're really going to be able to showcase some different possibilities [for those players] and hopefully give them something to aspire to."
Actual schedules won't be released until May or June.
Kerswill said, however, the UNBC soccer teams will have four home weekends and four away weekends in a schedule that will run from September to October. The other Canada West soccer teams are fellow expansion clubs Mount Royal University of Calgary and the University of Winnipeg (men and women), as well as (men) UBC, UVic, Trinity Western, University of the Fraser Valley, Alberta, Calgary, Lethbridge and Saskatchewan; and (women) UBC, UVic, Trinity Western, University of the Fraser Valley, Alberta, Calgary, Lethbridge, Saskatchewan, Regina and Manitoba.
The basketball teams, meanwhile, will play 12 home games and 10 on the road. The extra home game will be against Mount Royal, which will be in a western division with UNBC. In 2013-14, Mount Royal will get an extra home date against the Timberwolves. Travel considerations are the major factor in that arrangement.
On the basketball side, the T-wolves will play divisional opponents twice (Mount Royal, UBC, UVic, Fraser Valley, Trinity Western, Thompson Rivers University and UBC Okanagan) and non-divisional rivals once (Alberta, Calgary, Lethbridge, Saskatchewan, Regina, Manitoba, Winnipeg and Brandon University).
UNBC's Canada West membership still requires a stamp of approval from the national governing body, the CIS. Ratification is expected to occur at the organization's annual general meeting, set for late June in Ottawa. Two CIS officials -- CEO Marg McGregor and president-elect candidate Gord Grace -- will be in Prince George on April 27 for a site visit and meetings.
"Demonstrating that we're ready from a compliance standpoint is really one of the main things they're looking for -- that we have all of our eligibility documents and checks and procedures in place, that we have our scholarship monitoring in place," Kerswill said. "We'll have several meetings set up throughout the day, with our registrar, with our president, with myself, with the assistant provost -- really with anyone who has relationships with the athletics department. They'll also meet with our coaches and some of our student-athletes and that will be it. It will be a busy day."
