Tarleton State Texans | |
---|---|
University | Tarleton State University |
Conference | Western Athletic Conference United Athletic Conference (football) Conference USA (beach volleyball) |
NCAA | Division I |
Athletic director | Steve Uryasz |
Location | Stephenville, Texas |
Varsity teams | 16 |
Football stadium | Memorial Stadium |
Basketball arena | Wisdom Gym |
Baseball stadium | Cecil Ballow Baseball Complex |
Softball stadium | Tarleton Softball Complex |
Nickname | Texans |
Colors | Purple and white [1] |
Website | tarletonsports |
The Tarleton State Texans (formerly the Tarleton State Texans and TexAnns), [2] also known as the Tarleton Texans, are the athletic teams that represent Tarleton State University of Stephenville, Texas in NCAA Division I intercollegiate sports.
Before Tarleton became a four-year institution in 1961, they were known as the "Plowboys". The Texans compete as members of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) for 12 of their 14 varsity sports. During the school's four-year transition to full D-I membership, set to end in July 2024, Tarleton has planned to add several sports, with women's soccer the first to be confirmed, eventually launching in 2022. [3] [4] Tarleton next added beach volleyball, a women-only sport at the NCAA level, in the 2024 season (2023–24 school year), competing as a single-sport member of Conference USA. [5] Wrestling is another varsity sport addition as announced by the school in partnership with the NCWA and The Texas Collegiate Wrestling Foundation with aspirations of being the first NCAA Division I program in Texas. [6] [7]
Before joining the WAC in July 2020, Tarleton had been a member of the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference (LSC). It had two separate stints in the LSC, first from 1968–69 to 1975–76, when the Texans competed in the NAIA, and then from 1994–95 to 2019–20. Tarleton was also a founding member of the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (TIAA) in the 1976–77 school year and remained in that league until the 1990–91 school year. From 1991–92 to 1993–94, Tarleton played as an independent. The Texans began their transition to Division I upon joining the WAC. [8] Tarleton's football program competes at the second level of D-I football, the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS); it played its first D-I season as an independent before the WAC reinstated football in fall 2021. [9]
Shortly after the 2022 season, the WAC and the ASUN Conference, which had operated a football-only partnership in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, fully merged their football leagues, with Tarleton as one of the new league's nine initial members. [10] [11] The new league's permanent name of United Athletic Conference was officially announced in April 2023. [12]
The first TSU women's varsity teams, introduced in 1968–69, played under the "Texans" nickname. However, due to female athletes' wish to play under a distinctive nickname, the school changed it the following school year, though a consistent spelling was not immediately adopted—"Texanns", "Tex-Anns", and "TexAnns" were used interchangeably until 1972–73, when "TexAnns" was officially settled on. During the 2018–19 school year, two players and a student manager in the women's basketball program started a campaign to change the women's nickname back to "Texans". After receiving buy-in from virtually all female athletes, plus much of the university community, TSU announced in January 2019 that women's teams would once again be known as "Texans" starting in 2019–20. [13]
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Conference USA (CUSA) is an intercollegiate athletic conference of member institutions in the Southern and Western United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. CUSA's offices are located in Dallas, Texas.
The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is an NCAA Division I conference. The WAC covers a broad expanse of the Western United States with member institutions located in Arizona, California, Texas, Utah and Washington.
The Lone Star Conference (LSC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. Member institutions are located in the South Central states, with schools in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, with two members in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon and Washington competing as affiliates for football only.
The South Atlantic Conference (SAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level, which operates in the southeastern United States. The SAC was founded in 1975 as a football-only conference and became an all-sports conference beginning with the 1989–90 season.
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NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate facilities and more athletic scholarships than Division II and Division III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.
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The Abilene Christian Wildcats football program is the intercollegiate American football team for the Abilene Christian University located in the U.S. state of Texas. The team was a member of the Southland Conference through the 2020–21 season, but joined the Western Athletic Conference in July 2021, coinciding with that league's reinstatement of football as an official conference sport. After the 2022 season, the WAC fully merged its football league with that of the ASUN Conference, creating what eventually became the United Athletic Conference, and ACU accordingly moved its football team to the new league. The school's first football team was fielded in 1919. The team plays its home games at the on-campus Anthony Field at Wildcat Stadium.
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The Tarleton State Texans football program, also known as the Tarleton Texans, is the intercollegiate American football team for Tarleton State University located in the U.S. state of Texas. Through the 2019 season, the team competed in NCAA Division II as members of the Lone Star Conference, but moved to the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) beginning in the 2020–21 NCAA Division I FCS football season. In fall 2021, Tarleton's full-time home of the Western Athletic Conference revived its football league at the FCS level, with Tarleton as one of the inaugural members.
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