Kentucky men’s soccer program joins new conference
The Kentucky men’s soccer program has a new home.
The Wildcats will be moving from Conference USA to the Sun Belt Conference.
The Wildcats had played men’s soccer in C-USA since 2005.
The Southeastern Conference, in which most of UK’s other sports operate, does not sponsor men’s soccer.
Wednesday also brought the announcement by the Sun Belt that it would once again sponsor men’s soccer as a sport, beginning this fall. The Sun Belt will now sponsor 18 NCAA Division I sports.
Kentucky will join the Sun Belt as an affiliate member.
The Sun Belt previously sponsored men’s soccer from 1976-1996 and from 2014-2020, and this latest version of men’s soccer in the Sun Belt will feature nine schools: Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, James Madison, Kentucky, Marshall, Old Dominion, South Carolina and West Virginia.
Several of those schools will be familiar to UK head coach Johan Cedergren and the UK program.
Coastal Carolina, Marshall, Old Dominion and South Carolina were all part of C-USA with Kentucky. Marshall won the 2020 NCAA Tournament, which was held in spring 2021.
In total, four of the nine schools that will comprise the 2022 Sun Belt men’s soccer field reached the NCAA Tournament last season: Georgia State, Kentucky, Marshall and West Virginia.
“We are thrilled to join a league that will continue to align with our belief of comprehensive excellence,” Cedergren said in a statement Wednesday. “We are honored to become a member of this outstanding conference and want to thank everyone who has been involved in this process to ensure student-athletes and teams are set up for success.”
The Sun Belt’s membership will consist of 14 schools starting in July, with UK, South Carolina and West Virginia joining only for men’s soccer.
Kentucky’s time playing men’s soccer in C-USA featured several championships, including this past season.
The Cats won their second C-USA Tournament championship in November with an overtime win over Florida Atlantic, before later advancing to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16.
This was the fourth-ever and second-straight Sweet 16 appearance for Kentucky.
Kentucky won both the C-USA regular-season championship and the C-USA Tournament in 2018.
The deepest postseason run in Kentucky men’s soccer history also came in 2018, when the Wildcats reached the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals.
This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 1:26 PM.
