At the end of the 2025-26 athletic season, a major restructure of the Western Athletic Conference is set to take place.

Since its creation in 1962, the WAC has been the home of over 40 collegiate programs, including Hawaii, Arizona and the United States Air Force Academy. But after only five seasons of ACU being in the conference, the WAC is set to rebrand as the United Athletic Conference on July 1.

Of course, the Wildcats are quite familiar with conference shifts, going back all the way to their time in Division II.

ACU to Division I

ACU had a lot of success at the Division II level, racking up an astounding 57 national championships and 167 Lone Star Conference titles. But after 40 years, the university decided to move up to Division I in 2013.

Julie Goodenough, the head coach of the women’s basketball team, was one year into her tenure when the move took place. When she was hired, she knew that the university was already slated to advance to Division I and began to plan accordingly.

“We were just going to run it like a D-I program from the beginning,” Goodenough said.

In women’s basketball, the Wildcats went out with a bang, winning the Lone Star Conference regular season title in their final year.

But as the university made the switch, there were a few growing pains. The new schedule for the team, coming to campus earlier in the year for practices, and other changes required shifts by the university. From housing to additional summer classes, the university needed to make additional changes in order to support teams as they began to get acclimated to Division I.

“So there have been a lot of changes that the school had to get on board with,” Goodenough said. “So certainly it’s not just a decision that impacts your athletic department, but it impacts the entire university.”

Early D-I Success

At the time, when a collegiate program shifted from Division II to Division I, there was a four-year reclassification period. During this time, the university was ineligible for postseason play in conference and national championships.

In their 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons in the Southland Conference, the Wildcats took the conference regular season title in women’s basketball. However, because of the NCAA regulation, they were not able to compete in the Southland Conference Tournament.

In 2019 however, things were very much in the Wildcats’ favor. Both basketball teams won the Southland Conference Tournament and received automatic bids in the NCAA Tournaments. The women’s team, under the direction of Goodenough, made the team’s first March Madness appearance in program history.

“You know the first Southland Tournament championship and first opportunity to play in the NCAA tournament, it was pretty fulfilling to be a part of that,” Goodenough said.

That same year, the men’s team, which was led by Head Coach Joe Golding, made it to the NCAA Tournament. Two years later, the team would go back to the NCAA Tournament and upset Texas in a nail-biting showdown that went to the final minutes of regulation.

Other programs at ACU also saw great success in the Southland. In 2021, the baseball team, under the leadership of current head coach Rick McCarty, won the Southland Conference regular season title.

The Shift to the WAC

During the 2020-2021 academic year however, the university began to discuss the possibility of shifting conferences. In conjunction with three other Texas teams, Lamar, Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, ACU made the official transition to the WAC on July 1, 2021.

According to Goodenough, the athletic administration at ACU felt like the Southland was “going in a downward direction” and wanted to align with schools with similar resources. Additionally, another big factor that encouraged this move was the travel for the teams to get to away games.

“Both leagues are totally different due to geography,” McCarty said.

With the addition of four collegiate programs from Texas, the WAC grew to a total of 12 teams. However over time, the teams within the conference began to shift. Since 2022, the WAC lost two teams every year as schools moved between conferences.

The teams that left are as follows:

Chicago State and Lamar, 2022

New Mexico State and Sam Houston State, 2023

Stephen F. Austin and UT Rio Grande Valley, 2024

Grand Canyon and Seattle, 2025

Heading into the 2025-26 season, there were seven total teams in the WAC, with the Utah Valley already making moves to leave the conference. With this increasing necessity to have enough teams to compete, talks began about what to do.

Origins of the UAC

The UAC was formed as a football partnership between the Western Athletic Conference and the Atlantic Sun Conference in 2023.

In order to receive an automatic qualifier in the FCS postseason, a conference must have at least 6 teams competing. After both conferences separately began to sponsor football in 2021, neither conference had enough teams to independently qualify for a spot in the postseason.

So in 2023, the two conferences created the UAC to allow their football-playing schools to compete and have a shot in the FCS playoffs.

After seeing the success of the UAC in football, and with the dwindling number of WAC teams, talks began about what the best course of action would be. ACU’s Athletic Department began to consider several other conference options.

However, the final decision was to stay with the WAC as it would transition to become the UAC. The conference will now become an all-sports conference rather than the football-only conference it was created to be. Evan Nemec, assistant AD for media relations, had been hearing rumors of what the plan would be before it was initially announced that the school would go to the UAC.

“It was a surprise when I found out that was what the plan was,” Nemec said. “But it makes sense from an efficiency stand point for the two conferences to work together. I think the big message is there’s more power in numbers.”

That decision was primarily made by Zack Lassiter, vice president for athletics, and Dr. Phil Schubert. Schubert, as the president of the university, is very involved in athletics and understands its value to the university as a whole. This decision though, was made without many conversations with the coaches of each of the programs on campus.

“I wasn’t really involved in it,” McCarty said. “So you just kind of play the game that you have to play in terms of the conference.

Goodenough seconded this opinion saying that she felt like the decision was made with the best interests of the teams in mind. She expressed that this shift was not a “knee jerk reaction” and was carefully considered by leadership.

“I think the athletic director and all their administrators as well as Dr. Schubert have always been super thoughtful and very meticulous about what’s best for our athletic department but also be in alignment with the standards of ACU in general,” Goodenough said.

In July of this year, the UAC will welcome three WAC teams that are following the conference, Abilene Christian, UT Arlington and Tarleton State. Additionally, five schools from the ASUN, those that sponsor football programs, will also be joining the conference; Austin Peay, Eastern Kentucky, North Alabama, West Georgia and Central Arkansas. West Florida will also be joining the WAC as a football-playing affiliate. Furthermore, Arkansas-Little Rock is also set to join the conference but they will not compete in football.

With new opponents on the calendar, the teams have already been looking ahead to get ready for the first season of UAC play. Ijeoma Moronu Alstrup, head coach of the volleyball team, said they have already been looking at who their new opponents will be.

“We’ve started just kind of looking at who was most successful in their conference last year and what we would need to do to compete with them,” Alstrup said.

Another change that comes with playing new teams is traveling to different locations to play. Goodenough said that the travel side of things is going to be “completely different” in the new conference.

“I mean it’ll be all new territory and our director of operations is our travel coordinator and she’s gonna have a lot of new things to do,” Goodenough said.

But with the spring seasons winding down, the teams are set to have their summer breaks before getting right back into the swing of things in their first year in the UAC.