KEARNEY, Neb. — The Division ll conference that includes the University of Nebraska-Kearney remains unified in pursuing membership growth.

That’s according to MIAA Commissioner Mike Racy. He says that unified view was his biggest takeaway from discussions with school administrators at last week’s conference summer meetings.

“You’re either getting bigger or you’re getting smaller. They want to be proactive," Racy said. "They want to be on the side of trying to grow and get bigger and better.”

With Lincoln University set to leave after the next academic year, the conference will have 13 members, 11 of which play football. Racy is targeting public regional universities in the Midwest in expansion. In order to pull them in, he says the conference will need to create north and south divisions for all sports.

“They’re only going to be interested if that footprint of who they’re competing against, where they’re going, where they need to travel looks a lot like where they’re at now,” Racy said.

Racy says administrators have talked about growing membership to 16 or perhaps even to 20 schools over the next four to five years.

“My goal over the next couple of years is to see if we can get to 16," Racy said. "Getting there may mean that we have a split of maybe 12 football schools and four that don’t sponsor football. It could be 14-2, but I think the objective would be to try to balance that out with even numbers.”

Racy expects the trend of significant change at the Division l level to continue. That could prompt a D-1 school to move to Division ll and consider the MIAA.

“The economics will show that they need to make a different decision with athletics because of the damage that they’re doing to the rest of campus and the resources that they’re redirecting towards athletics when it really needs to be different places,” Racy said.

Racy says schools have reached out to the MIAA showing interest in joining the conference.