To celebrate their 100th anniversary (and to really note that this is no longer a Kentucky-exclusive conference), the Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference has announced they will be known as the River States Conference for the next academic athletic calendar.
The change takes effect on July 1st.
With thirteen schools residing in five different states keeping the Kentucky name didn’t seem to make much sense any more, the 100th anniversary makes for a convenient milestone to start in a new, fresh, more accurate direction.
The River States name is in reference to the Ohio River, which flows through the centre of the conference and is near the majority of the thirteen schools.
The new logo, designed by Cincinnati’s Rebel Pilgrim Creative, features a green and blue shield with five stars across the top and hills with a river at the bottom. The new conference name featured prominently across it.
So the five stars at the top of the shield, those represent the five states, right? Wrong! They’re respect, responsibility, integrity, servant leadership, and sportsmanship — the five core values of the NAIA’s Champions of Character Initiative. The five states are still in there, but depicted instead via the topographical areas at the bottom.
The KIAC is the oldest conference in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, it was founded in 1916. The entire re-naming process took approximately four years, while the logo development began in September 2015.