VALLEY CITY, ND  (NewsDakota.com)  The Frontier Conference has scheduled a press conference for 2:00 PM Tuesday.

No details have been given, other than Frontier Conference Commissioner Dr. Scott Crawford and “other guests” will be involved.

The conference is likely related to the addition of new members in the league.  A handful of schools from the North Star Athletic Association, including Valley City State, have been considering their options for conference affiliation following the announcement that their current league would disband after the 2024-25 season.

Sources have told NewsDakota.com that a change of interest by Dakota State, who was initially not in favor of joining the Frontier, have made the prospects of joining the league more feasible.  Divisionalizing a conference with a large geographic footprint seems to a likely outcome.

The full members of the Frontier Conference are Carroll College (Helena, MT), Montana State University-Northern (Havre, MT), Montana Tech (Butte, MT), Montana-Western (Dillon, MT), University of Providence (Great Falls, MT), and Rocky Mountain College (Billings, MT).

Affiliate members include Arizona Christian University (Glendale, AZ), College of Idaho (Caldwell, ID), Eastern Oregon University (LaGrande, OR), and Southern Oregon University (Ashland, OR), all as football schools.

Dickinson State had already made the announcement that they were joining the league months ago.  Dakota State and Valley City State have been mentioned as strong candidates, and Bismarck State College, recently approved for four-year sports, is another likely program headed to the Frontier.

The final question mark seems to be Mayville State, which has been approved for NCAA Division III exploration, with a potential opportunity to join the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference, based in Minnesota.

Over the past months, VCSU staff has engaged in a tour of meeting with alumni and fans, as well as receiving an NCAA Division II audit to evaluate it’s preparedness for possible Division II membership.  While the latest information would seem to mean membership in the Frontier Conference, there seems to be remaining interest in future Division II membership.

Should the league split into divisions, and add Mayville State, four former North Star football programs would still be in the Dakotas.  The early word is that football scheduling would involve cross-over games that would mean one mid-range and one long-range road trip in a scheduling cycle.  That cycle may be two years, meaning that, in one year, a schools makes a mid-range trip, and a long-range trip in year two.

Basketball would have details to be worked out, as Bismarck State is a basketball school.  With five teams in the Dakotas and six in Montana, the conference would be adding a division-sized new class.

Baseball and softball are not offered by the Frontier at present.  An association of independent universities could serve as a qualification process.

The status of Bellevue University, in Bellevue, NE, is unknown.

The presser will be carried on the conference’s YouTube channel.