The Summit League

The Summit League is a NCAA conference that plays in NCAA Division I. The member universities and colleges are in the Midwestern United States, plus one member in Colorado. Their headquarters are in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, having moved from the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Illinois in 2018.

The league once sponsored football, but dropped the sport after the 1984 season. Five Summit League members have football teams; four play in the Missouri Valley Football Conference and one in the Pioneer Football League.

History

The Summit League was founded in 1982 as the Association of Mid-Continent Universities (AMCU or AMCU-8) with eight members. The only one of these schools that is still a member is Western Illinois. In 1989, the AMCU changed its name to the Mid-Continent Conference, or MCC (those initials, however, were also being used by the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, now the Horizon League).

The Mid-Continent saw many changes in the first part of the 1990s, with the biggest coming in 1992 and 1994. In 1992, the conference added women's sports after it absorbed the North Star Conference, a league that only sponsored women's sports. Then in 1994, six schools (including three charter members) left for the Midwestern Collegiate Conference. They were replaced by six other schools, five of them coming from the collapsed East Coast Conference. None of the schools that joined in 1994 are now in the league.

Since the 1994 changes, the conference has had anywhere from 8 to 10 members. It changed its name to The Summit League in 2007.

Members
The Summit League now has nine full members. The most recent change in membership took place in 2023, when the conference's last remaining charter member, Western Illinois University, left for the Ohio Valley Conference. Another recent change took place in 2021, when the University of St. Thomas, located in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area, joined the conference to start an unprecedented move from NCAA Division III directly to Division I.

 School  Location  Founded  Type  Nickname  Joined   Denver, Colorado  1864  Private  Pioneers  2013  (Kansas City)  Kansas City, Missouri  1933  Public  Roos  1994, 2020   Grand Forks, North Dakota  1890  Public  Fighting Hawks  2018 North Dakota State University  Fargo, North Dakota  1890  Public  Bison  2007  (Omaha)  Omaha, Nebraska  1908  Public  Mavericks  2012 Oral Roberts University  Tulsa, Oklahoma  1963  Private  Golden Eagles  1997, 2014   Saint Paul, Minnesota  1885  Private  Tommies  2021   Vermillion, South Dakota  1862  Public  Coyotes  2011 South Dakota State University  Brookings, South Dakota  1881  Public  Jackrabbits  2007

Associate members
The Summit League has seven "associate" members—schools that play in a few sports, usually but not always one. Three of these schools play three sports in the conference, and three more house one sport in the conference. (Note that the NCAA counts men's and women's teams in the same sport as playing two different sports, and also considers swimming and diving to be a single sport.)

Western Illinois left the Summit League in 2023, but kept its men's soccer team in that conference for the fall 2023 season. That team will join the rest of the university's sports in the Ohio Valley Conference in 2024.
 School  Location  Founded  Type  Nickname  Summit Leaguesports  Joined  Main conference Drake University  Des Moines, Iowa  1881  Private  Bulldogs  Men's tennis  2017  Missouri Valley Eastern Illinois University  Charleston, Illinois  1895  Public  Panthers  Men's swimming and divingWomen's swimming and diving  2005  Ohio Valley Illinois State University  Normal, Illinois  1857  Public  Redbirds  Men's tennis  2017  Missouri Valley Lindenwood University    1827  Private  Lions  Men's swimming and divingWomen's swimming and diving  2022  Ohio Valley   Greeley, Colorado  1889  Public  Bears  Baseball  2021  Big Sky   Evansville, Indiana  1965  Public  Screaming Eagles  Men's swimming and divingWomen's swimming and diving  2022  Ohio Valley Western Illinois University  Macomb, Illinois  1899  Public  Leathernecks  Men's soccer  2023  Ohio Valley

Former members
No fewer than 23 schools have been full members, but are no longer in the league.

References


Category:NCAA Division I athletics conferences
Category:1982 establishments in the United States