Starting next year, Brenau becomes a member of the Asheville, North Carolina-based Appalachian Athletic Conference, which gives the Golden Tigers a wide range of intercollegiate sports options, including lacrosse. In the AAC, Brenau will compete in cross country, soccer, volleyball, basketball, swimming, softball, tennis, golf, track & field and lacrosse.

The Tigers will move from the Southern States Athletic Conference. Brenau swimming, the defending champion in the unrelated Appalachian Swimming Conference that comprises both NAIA and smaller NCAA schools, joins the AAC in 2017-18.

AAC Commissioner John Sullivan says Brenau’s solid athletic program and academic reputation “fits well with our emphasis on academics first and character-driven athletics.”

Brenau Athletics Director Mike Lochstampfor says the AAC is “a better fit for us” with less travel time involved in home-and-home matchups with conference opponents.

Other AAC members are Truett-McConnell College, Point University, Reinhardt University and SCAD Atlanta in Georgia; St. Andrews University and Montreat College in North Carolina; Tennessee Wesleyan College, Milligan College and Bryan College in Tennessee; Allen University and Columbia College in South Carolina; Union College in Kentucky; and Bluefield College in Virginia.Affiliate members include Kentucky’s Asbury University and The University of the Cumberlands in lacrosse and Asbury and West Virginia University Institute of Technology in swimming.