Vancouver Island University hasn’t been let into Canadian Interuniversity Sport, but pressure may be slowly mounting.

A decision on VIU’s bid for its basketball and volleyball teams to join the CIS’s Canada West conference has been deferred for a year.

“That was their decision, was to not make a decision,” said Bruce Hunter, VIU’s athletic director.

Canada West, he said, couldn’t come up with league schedules that were acceptable to the existing members and applying members.

The conference floated the idea of a Tier 2 that would include the three applying schools – VIU, UBC-Okanagan and the University of Northern B.C. – and recent expansion schools Thompson Rivers University and the University of the Fraser Valley.

“That wasn’t acceptable, really, to anybody,” Hunter said.

“If we’re going to make the jump and spend the money and have the commitment to go to that Canada West level, we want to play the Canada West teams. We don’t want to just keep playing the same teams we’re already playing.”

Things will remain status quo in Canada West for another year, but the university sport landscape is changing.

Two Alberta colleges – Mount Royal and Grant McEwan – are applying for university status and Hunter speculates both will want into the CIS sooner than later.

“Canada West has to figure out how to deal with an expanding membership and they’ve either got to say we can’t expand anymore, or I believe the ultimate decision is going to be that our geography is going to dictate our format,” Hunter said.

With 19-20 post-secondary institutions in B.C. with athletic departments, Hunter thinks it makes sense to have one national association split into regional conferences, each with a Div. 1 and a Div. 2.

Sport Canada recently allotted funding for a study on the matter, but major restructuring of the country’s post-secondary sports leagues isn’t going to happen overnight – Canada West will need to come to some kind of decision in the interim.

“We’re hoping that they can come up with something that is workable,” Hunter said.

sports@nanaimobulletin.com