MILWAUKEE – The Mount Mary University Athletic Department announced it will be joining the Association of Division III Independents beginning the 2016-17 season in the sports of basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball. The move was prompted after the dissolving of the Great South Athletic Conference this summer.

Mount Mary University Director of Athletics Marc Heidorf comments on the move, "Our teams have the opportunity to build off the competition and post-season experience gained last season in the GSAC and bring to AD3I with the realistic goal of reaching new heights in a new, more competitive AD3I that has seen a jump to nearly twice the size it was just a few years ago."

Multiple AD3I schools fall in the Midwest region, Maranatha Baptist (Watertown, Wis.), Illinois Tech (Chicago) and Finlandia (Hancock, Mich.). Along with MMU and Finlandia, University of California Santa Cruz and Pine Manor joined the AD3I this off-season after spending the previous year in the GSAC.

The Association of Division III Independents is currently a collection of nine other independent institutions that have no official membership with a conference. The ultimate goal of the association is to give these independent schools a unified voice on issues concerning intercollegiate athletics, and to recognize student-athlete accomplishments among those independent schools.

Prior to joining the GSAC and the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference in 2015, MMU Athletics was a member of the AD3I for seven seasons. Throughout those seasons, the Blue Angels made a name for themselves via awards and recognition. In the 2014-15 collegiate year, MMU Athletics was highly decorated. Among the many awards the Blue Angels took home that season, the program finished with three AD3I Rookie of the Year awards (Freeman, basketball; Onan, soccer; Contreras, softball), AD3I Goalkeeper of the Year (Onan, soccer), AD3I Offensive Player of the Year (Ristow, soccer), AD3I Player of the Year (K. Edwards, softball) and AD3I Coach of the Year (T. Edwards, softball).

The Blue Angels fall season is almost here, keep up-to-date with MMU Athletics at mtmaryathletics.com or follow on twitter @MtMaryAthletics.