Conferences: The Ohio Valley Conference has approved Austin Peay State University's request to be reinstated for conference football competition, effective with the 2007 season. Austin Peay State, which dropped from scholarship to nonscholarship football after the 1996 season, will leave the Pioneer Football League after the 2005 season. In 2006, Austin Peay State will move from nonscholarship to partial-scholarship status as a Division I-AA independent, then rejoin the Ohio Valley as a full-scholarship member in 2007. The Governors previously competed as a football-playing member in the league from 1963 to 1996.

Milestones: University of Delaware head softball coach B.J. Ferguson registered her 500th career victory April 13 when the Blue Hens swept Rider College, 8-0 and 6-0. Ferguson, who has amassed a 500-450-4 record in 25 seasons at Delaware, is the 41st active Division I softball coach to reach the 500-win plateau. Ferguson, who also was 103-62 in 12 years as the Delaware women's tennis coach from 1980 to 1992, is the third Delaware head coach to win 500 career games in one sport, joining former Blue Hens baseball coach Bob Hannah and former volleyball coach Barbara Viera.

Miscellaneous: The University of Missouri, Columbia, hosted the first decathlon held in the United States exclusively for women as part of the second annual Audrey Walton Combined Event April 15. The two-day festival featured a four-person field in the women's decathlon highlighted by 2004 Lithuanian Olympic heptathlon silver medalist and former Kansas State University athlete Austra Skujyte. Skujyte ended up breaking the IAAF world record in the event with 8,366 points. Liz Young from Missouri and Breanna Eveland from Kansas State also competed in the event. The Walton meet also featured a traditional women's heptathlon and men's decathlon. "The heptathlon for women is and has been a major part of international, national and collegiate track and field for the past 24 years," said Missouri head track coach Rick McGuire. "There has been a movement to make the decathlon the standard for women to make the two genders equal in the combined events. When I first started to coach track and field, the 800 meters was the longest event for women to run on the track; since then, track and field has extended the standard to 10,000 meters, equal to the men. The pole vault is now in its sixth year for women -- all these events are normal now. There was this thought by some that 'women can't do that,' and I think we are dispelling that every day. Adding the ultimate challenge to athletes -- the decathlon -- to a normal female program is the last barrier to be broken." The current standard for women is the two-day, seven-event heptathlon. As in the men's decathlon, the women's decathlon modifies the heptathlon by adding the 100-meter dash, discus and pole vault, and extends the 200-meter dash to 400 meters and the 800-meter run to 1,500 meters. "Several competitions have been held in Europe and I think it's time for the U.S. to see the significance of the event," McGuire said. "We are excited to put this on the front burner of the track and field world."

-- Compiled by Gary T. Brown