Denver Pioneers

The Denver Pioneers are the sports teams of the University of Denver (DU). They play in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, with most teams participating in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). DU officially left the Sun Belt Conference for the WAC on July 1, 2012, and announced in November of that year that it would leave the WAC to join The Summit League on July 1, 2013.

The University has been fielding athletic teams since 1867. DU's athletic teams are known as the Pioneers. In the early years of competition from the 1860s to the early 1920s, Denver had no official nickname, but sports writers of the day referred to Denver teams as the "Ministers" or "Fighting Parsons" in homage to the Methodist heritage of the school. Denver officially became the "Pioneers" in 1925, after the result of a student nickname contest, and that nickname has been in place ever since.

With over 200 All Americans, 28 NCAA Championships, and 58 Olympians in its history, there is a long tradition of excellence in Pioneer sports. Today, DU operates a full NCAA Division I athletic program with a unique and successful mix of sports in and around the $85 million Daniel Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness, which was completed in 2000. In 2008, Denver was 47th overall in the NACDA Director's Cup, which ranks NCAA programs on total athletic program achievement, and was first among NCAA D-I schools without football programs (D-I AAA). Sports Illustrated ranked the DU program 23rd in the nation in 2008 among all schools.

Denver is a member of the WAC for basketball, swimming and diving, tennis and golf for both men and women, plus women's volleyball, soccer and gymnastics. Other DU teams play in various conferences in the sports that are not sponsored by the WAC. The men's ice hockey team currently plays in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), but will leave that conference after the 2012–13 season to become a charter member of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC). The men's soccer and women's lacrosse teams play in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). Men's and women's skiing compete in the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Ski Association, while men's lacrosse participates in the ECAC Lacrosse League.

When DU joins The Summit League, it will move all of its WAC teams except for women's gymnastics, a sport not sponsored by its new conference. In addition, its men's soccer team will leave the MPSF, as The Summit League sponsors that sport.

Read more about Denver Pioneers:  Teams, Ice Hockey, Other Sports

Famous quotes containing the word pioneers:

    The emancipation of today displays itself mainly in cigarettes and shorts. There is even a reaction from the ideal of an intellectual and emancipated womanhood, for which the pioneers toiled and suffered, to be seen in painted lips and nails, and the return of trailing skirts and other absurdities of dress which betoken the slave-woman’s intelligent companionship.
    Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960)