Established in 1978 with a commitment to the purposes, fundamental policies and basic principles of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) has grown to embody the vision established by the founders of the organization and has melded athletic and academic excellence for 33 years.
The GLVC, which over the past decade has grown to 17 members, has fully embraced NCAA Division II and is now the largest athletic conference in the country in any division. Although formed and developed as one of the nation’s premier basketball conferences, the GLVC has nurtured 17 championship sports and can now claim itself as one of the nation’s top NCAA Division II conferences.
The formation of the GLVC can be traced as far back as 1972 when the athletic directors of three member schools - Kentucky Wesleyan, Bellarmine and Indiana State University at Evansville (now the University of Southern Indiana) - began preliminary discussions about forming a basketball conference. Four years later, the University of Indianapolis and Saint Joseph’s College expressed interest. On July 7, 1978, those schools - along with Ashland University - united to become the GLVC.
Since its inception, 15 different institutions have joined the league. Those members include: Lewis University (1980), Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne (1984), Northern Kentucky University (1985), Kentucky State University (1989), Quincy University (1994), Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (1994), University of Wisconsin-Parkside (1994), University of Missouri-St. Louis (1995), Drury (2005), Missouri S&T (2005), Rockhurst (2005), University of Illinois-Springfield (2008), Maryville University (2008), William Jewell College (2009) and McKendree University (2010).
Ashland and Kentucky State left the conference after the 1994 season, IPFW left the league following the 2000-01 academic year and SIU Edwardsville exited the league following the 2007-08 academic year. These departures opened the door for the seven-team expansion over the past decade, allowing the league to grow to its current membership of 17 institutions.
The conference headquarters are located in downtown Indianapolis, one of the many major Midwest media markets in which the league maintains a presence. The GLVC has schools in Milwaukee/Northern Illinois (UW-Parkside), Chicago (Lewis), Indianapolis (Indianapolis), Cincinnati (Northern Kentucky), Louisville (Bellarmine), Evansville (Southern Indiana), Springfield, Ill. (UIS), Springfield, Mo. (Drury), Owensboro (Kentucky Wesleyan), Kansas City (Rockhurst, William Jewell) and St. Louis (Maryville, McKendree, UM-St. Louis).
The conference sponsors 17 championships in baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, indoor and outdoor track and field, and tennis for men and basketball, cross country, softball, soccer, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, golf, and volleyball for women. In addition, the GLVC will begin sponsoring a football championship in 2012.
GLVC institutions have won 12 national championships in basketball, including Bellarmine who claimed the men’s title last season. Kentucky Wesleyan leads all Division II institutions with eight men’s basketball titles, while Southern Indiana won the men’s crown in 1995. Northern Kentucky’s women won the school’s first-ever basketball national championship in 2000 and followed that with a national title in 2008. In addition, Northern Kentucky became the first GLVC member to win a national championship in men’s soccer and USI staked claim to the school and GLVC’s first baseaball championship in 2010. SIU Edwardsville was the first GLVC member to win a national championship in softball in 2007.
The league also takes pride in recognizing the many academic and athletic accomplishments achieved by its student-athletes, coaches and administrators. In 2001, the league announced the creation of the GLVC Hall of Fame, with the first class being inducted in 2002. The GLVC annually presents the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award to the top male and female student-athlete in the league, and the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction to alumni who both succeeded while a GLVC student-athlete and excelled in accomplishments after graduation.
The league continually maintains an effort to combine academic and athletic excellence and the hard work put forth by the student-athletes has been evident on the playing fields and in the classrooms.
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