Before Tarleton became a four-year institution in 1961, they were known as the "Plowboys". The Texans compete as members of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) for 12 of their 14 varsity sports. During the school's four-year transition to full D-I membership, set to end in July 2024, Tarleton has planned to add several sports, with women's soccer the first to be confirmed, eventually launching in 2022.[3][4] Tarleton next added beach volleyball, a women-only sport at the NCAA level, in the 2024 season (2023–24 school year), competing as a single-sport member of Conference USA.[5]Wrestling is another varsity sport addition as announced by the school in partnership with the NCWA and The Texas Collegiate Wrestling Foundation with aspirations of being the first NCAA Division I program in Texas.[6][7]
Before joining the WAC in July 2020, Tarleton had been a member of the NCAA Division IILone Star Conference (LSC). It had two separate stints in the LSC, first from 1968–69 to 1975–76, when the Texans competed in the NAIA, and then from 1994–95 to 2019–20. Tarleton was also a founding member of the Texas Intercollegiate Athletic Association (TIAA) in the 1976–77 school year and remained in that league until the 1990–91 school year. From 1991–92 to 1993–94, Tarleton played as an independent. The Texans began their transition to Division I upon joining the WAC.[8] Tarleton's football program competes at the second level of D-I football, the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS); it played its first D-I season as an independent before the WAC reinstated football in fall 2021.[9]
Shortly after the 2022 season, the WAC and the ASUN Conference, which had operated a football-only partnership in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, fully merged their football leagues, with Tarleton as one of the new league's nine initial members.[10][11] The new league's permanent name of United Athletic Conference was officially announced in April 2023.[12]
Women's nickname history
The first TSU women's varsity teams, introduced in 1968–69, played under the "Texans" nickname. However, due to female athletes' wish to play under a distinctive nickname, the school changed it the following school year, though a consistent spelling was not immediately adopted—"Texanns", "Tex-Anns", and "TexAnns" were used interchangeably until 1972–73, when "TexAnns" was officially settled on. During the 2018–19 school year, two players and a student manager in the women's basketball program started a campaign to change the women's nickname back to "Texans". After receiving buy-in from virtually all female athletes, plus much of the university community, TSU announced in January 2019 that women's teams would once again be known as "Texans" starting in 2019–20.[13]
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