Leap of faith: Queens makes the jump to Division I, searching for a higher profile
Queens University of Charlotte took its shot Tuesday, moving up from Division II to Division I in college athletics with the fervent belief that the benefits will outweigh the cost.
You could feel the historic weight of the day at a packed afternoon press conference, where Queens officials spoke about this leap of faith that will include the Royals immediately joining the Atlanta-based ASUN conference. Queens will become one of the mid-major conference’s 14 members in 2022-23, as well as the only North Carolina member of the league formerly known as the Atlantic Sun.
“This is a defining moment for Queens,” Queens president Daniel Lugo said Tuesday. “One that positions us to be a nationally-recognized university synonymous with the city of Charlotte, one that highlights our commitment to excellence in all that we do, one we have worked really hard for over a number of years and one that we are prepared to take full advantage of.”
Queens has no plans to add football — that was asked and answered several times at the news conference.
But the Royals already sponsor 26 sports teams and have long been a Division II power in sports like swimming, basketball and lacrosse. The school wants to increase its enrollment and visibility — to remove the word “hidden” from the phrase “hidden gem” that is routinely tossed around about Queens. The university sees the move to Division I as one way to accomplish that.
Queens will be able to compete for ASUN conference titles starting this fall. But the NCAA’s four-year mandated reclassification period will mean that, unless the rules change (and they certainly might), Queens won’t be eligible for its first Division I “March Madness” berth until the 2026-27 season.
And Queens will undoubtedly compete well for that chance. The men’s basketball team at Queens went 30-4 this past season in Division II.
Longtime ASUN commissioner Ted Gumbart said the conference would actually like Queens to be able to compete for its March Madness automatic qualifier berth as early as 2024-25, but that legislation the conference is helping to sponsor must pass for that change to be implemented.
In 2022, Bellarmine won the ASUN men’s basketball tournament, but because the Louisville school is in the reclassification process Queens will enter, it was ineligible for the NCAA tournament. ASUN regular-season champion Jacksonville (Ala.) State was sent in Bellarmine’s place.
Charlotte, Davidson and Queens
There are already two well-known Division I collegiate athletic programs in Mecklenburg County — the Charlotte 49ers and the Davidson Wildcats. Queens has long struggled to obtain the sort of media attention that Davidson gets by making the NCAA men’s tournament or by producing one of the most well-known athletes on the planet in two-time NBA MVP Steph Curry, or that Charlotte enjoys due to a Division I football team that began play in 2015 and generates headlines every fall.
“We see this as an opportunity to be the third leg in a stool that has two legs, with Davidson and UNC Charlotte,” Lugo said.
Outside its own campus, Queens athletic programs have mostly stayed under the radar in Division II. Few people know that Queens has won 25 national championships in Division II, with 14 of those coming from its remarkable men’s and women’s swimming program (the women’s and men’s teams have each won seven national titles in a row).
Said Lugo, theorizing that Queens has long been “under-recognized” for athletic achievements that supersede many other colleges: “So what do we get for being a dominant Division II athletic program? What’s the return on investment? … You don’t have to go too far into Charlotte to ask folks, ‘Who’s the most dominant (collegiate) athletic program in the city?’ And most people wouldn’t say us. But it’s not even close.”
Queens athletic director Cherie Swarthout said that the athletic department’s “all-in” budget, including scholarships, salaries and operating budget for each support was currently “about $18 million” and would increase to “$22-23 million” over the next four years as Queens makes the transition. No enormous new on-campus facilities are part of that number — Queens is relatively well-positioned there — but increasing the athletic staff from 72 full-time employees to around 110 will be, Swarthout said.
Said Swarthout, while also noting that the “Should Queens move to Division I?” conversation has stretched back at least 16 years: “We’ve got to pull many levers.”
Queens hopes for enrollment bump
The undergraduate enrollment at Queens is approximately 1800, which will make it one of the smallest Division I schools in the country.
Of those 1800, 633 play a sport for Queens, school officials said, meaning that more than a third of the student population participates in athletics. “We’d actually like to see that ratio get smaller as non student-athlete (enrollment) grows,” Lugo said.
A private school located in Myers Park, in the shadow of uptown Charlotte, Queens began as the Charlotte Female Institute in 1857. It was predominantly a women’s institution for decades, but went fully co-ed in 1987.
As a university, Queens would like to get bigger enrollment numbers, and the move to Division I is part of a concerted effort to raise the profile of the campus.
Lugo said that Queens and its board of trustees has “an aspiration and a plan for growth” that will mean “that in the next five years that we should be a decent deal larger. … We have a lot more capacity than what we’re using right now.”
Will a Division I athletic program help Queens get there? That remains to be seen.
But kudos to Queens for taking the shot. Life just got a lot more interesting for the Royal family.
This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 5:23 PM.
