Men’s wrestling becomes the 18th sport sponsored by the Mid-South Conference and will begin competition in the 2009-10 season. The MSC joins the Great Plains [...]]]>
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. — The Mid-South Conference athletics directors unanimously voted to add men’s wrestling as a conference sport on Wednesday at the annual summer meeting at Campbellsville University.

Men’s wrestling becomes the 18th sport sponsored by the Mid-South Conference and will begin competition in the 2009-10 season. The MSC joins the Great Plains Athletic Conference as the only conferences to recognize men’s wrestling as a conference sport in the NAIA division.

Campbellsville, Cumberland University, University of the Cumberlands, Lindsey Wilson College and West Virginia University Institute of Technology will make up the five-team conference.

“We’re incredibly excited about the addition of wrestling and what the sport and its student-athletes will bring to our conference,” Mid-South Conference Commissioner Mike Pollio said. “The Mid-South Conference continues to be one of the premiere conferences in the NAIA and we expect that wrestling will only strengthen that commitment to excellence.”

Full-time MSC members Campbellsville, Cumberlands, Lindsey Wilson and West Virginia Tech are joined by Cumberland — who prior to joining the MSC in wrestling was a football-only member — to makeup only the second wrestling conference in the NAIA. The MSC joins the Great Plains Athletic Conference as the only conferences to recognize men’s wrestling as a sport at the conference level.

The upcoming season will include the MSC Championships hosted by Campbellsville in late February prior to the NAIA National Championships scheduled for March 4-6, 2010 in Oklahoma City, Okla.

“We continue to look for ways serve our institutions, teams and most importantly our student-athletes,” Pollio said. “The addition of wrestling is another example of the Mid-South Conference serving our student-athletes by embracing their accomplishments both in competition and in the classroom.

“Wrestling is an ideal fit with the other 17 sports in the Mid-South Conference and we welcome its coaches and student-athletes with open arms.”

If you would like to know more details about how Wrestling was added as the MSC’s newest sport or what it means to our sport, listen in on an interview on Takedown Radio with Cumberland University’s Head Coach Jarad Swint.