Once for Women Only, Georgian Court Looks to Men’s Teams to Raise Profile

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

Luka Zgonjanin (5) of Serbia arrived in August at Georgian Court, a liberal arts college on the outskirts of the Jersey Shore.

LAKEWOOD, N.J. — Luka Zgonjanin arrived in the United States from Serbia in August, barely able to speak English. He had accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Georgian Court, a small liberal arts university on the outskirts of the Jersey Shore. A few months earlier, he had never heard of the college.

Ben Solomon for The New York Times

The Georgian Court men’s basketball team, during its first home loss Tuesday, plays its games at the Wellness Center, which holds 1,200 spectators.

Yet Zgonjanin, 19, quickly grew comfortable in his new surroundings.

“For me, it’s a good feeling because there are many girls on the campus,” a smiling Zgonjanin said after Georgian Court’s first men’s basketball home game on Nov. 20, a 87-82 victory against Mercy College.

The sight of male students living in dorms or dribbling basketballs in the gymnasium here remains a novelty. This fall, after 104 years as a women’s college, Georgian Court became a full-time coed institution. Zgonjanin is one of about 50 student-athletes who make up the first men’s athletic teams in university history.

“It’s a great honor to start something from scratch, to make history,” Zgonjanin said. “Everything we do is a first.”

As a coeducational N.C.A.A. Division II program, Georgian Court legally had to include athletics for students of both sexes. Sister Rosemary Jeffries, Georgian Court’s president, described the transition as “like a reverse Title IX,” referring to the 1972 law that has helped female student-athletes gain athletic opportunities.

But the university also hopes the addition of men’s teams will expand awareness of the university beyond the campus gates, shedding old stigmas as it aims to increase its enrollment.

“It will take us some time to get more well known as a coed institution, and I think athletics in some ways helps us do some of that,” Jeffries said. “We’ve been in this region a long time, and people know us as one thing.”

The Sisters of Mercy, an organization of Catholic women dedicated to serving the underprivileged, founded Georgian Court in 1908, as Mount Saint Mary’s College in North Plainfield, N.J. The university moved to Lakewood in 1924, after purchasing land from the Gould family, whose patriarch, Jay Gould, amassed his fortune in America’s growing railroad industry in the late 19th century.

Male students were first allowed to attend evening classes at Georgian Court in 1979 but could not live on campus until this year. According to a university official, there are 301 undergraduate male students, up from 190 in 2012. In total, the university has 1,567 undergraduates.

Athletics had never been a major draw for the student body. A sizable percentage of Georgian Court’s population includes adult commuters who work full time and are returning to college to finish a degree.

Laura Liesman, who was hired as athletic director in 2003, said she never envisioned such an expansion. When she came to Georgian Court, there were about 45 student-athletes participating in six women’s sports at the N.A.I.A. level.

This year, Georgian Court has five men’s teams: soccer, basketball, cross-country, and indoor and outdoor track and field. It fields women’s teams in those sports, as well as in tennis, lacrosse, softball and volleyball.

Recently, the athletic facilities have been upgraded. Liesman’s original office was in the Casino building, an outdated hall where the Goulds held indoor polo matches in the early 1900s. The building, which also hosted Georgian Court’s women’s basketball and volleyball teams, had no bleachers; folding chairs were set up for crowds, usually at a maximum of 100. Today, the hub of athletics is the Wellness Center, which opened in 2008 and has a gymnasium that holds 1,200 spectators.

Still, engaging people outside the campus has been a challenge. Lakewood has more than 90,000 residents and is among the fastest-growing cities in New Jersey. But a majority of its population are Haredi Jews — Beth Medrash Govoha, one of the largest yeshivas in the world, is three blocks from Georgian Court’s main entrance — and there are cultural barriers throughout the town.

Creating name recognition in neighboring locales has also proved challenging.

Once for Women Only, Georgian Court Looks to Men’s Teams to Raise Profile