Wednesday, January 05, 2005

            JOHNSON CITY, TENN. (Jan. 5, 2005) - As the East Tennessee State University Department of Intercollegiate Athletics prepares to join the Atlantic Sun Conference in 2005-06, the A-Sun announced on Wednesday the addition of two more schools to the conference next season.

Along with ETSU, Kennesaw State University and the University of North Florida will both join the conference next year. Kennessaw State is located north of Atlanta, while North Florida is located in Jacksonville, Fla.

"The addition of these two growing state institutions will be very important to the strength of the Atlantic Sun Conference," said ETSU Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Dave Mullins. "Having been involved in the expansion process over the last few months, I have been impressed with the success of these programs over the last several years which has led to their moving to the Division I level. Both have shown a commitment to become very competitive in all their programs and have recently added very fine facilities in order to make this move. Their locations in Jacksonville and Atlanta should be very attractive to our fans who want to travel to support our teams."