Aug. 30, 2006

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) -Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne tentatively accepted an invitation Wednesday to join the Mid-Continent Conference next year.

If membership is ratified by IPFW's faculty senate, the school with about 7,800 undergraduate students would begin league competition in 2007-08 and be immediately eligible for conference championships and possible NCAA tournament berths, conference commissioner Tom Douple said.

He said the league's Presidents Council voted unanimously earlier in the day to offer membership to IPFW.

"IPFW will make the Mid-Con a better conference, and we are extremely excited to include this fine institution in our conference," Douple said. "IPFW's sports programs readily complement those in the Mid-Continent Conference. They are a good fit."

IPFW, currently an independent, offers programs in baseball, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's golf, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's tennis, women's indoor and outdoor track and field, and men's and women's volleyball.

Of those sports, only men's volleyball is currently not sponsored by the Mid-Con.

IPFW, which opened in 1964, moved up to NCAA Division I in 2000 and would be the third Indiana member of the Mid-Con, joining IUPUI and Valparaiso. The other conference's other members are Oakland, Mich., Southern Utah, Oral Roberts, Centenary, Western Illinois and Missouri-Kansas City.