Southern Illinois University has been awarded the right to host the Missouri Valley Conference Championships in women’s swimming and diving, baseball, and track for the upcoming NCAA season. This move comes as the conference attempts to reduce its spending on the meet.
Speaking to the Southern Illinoisan, SIU athletic director Liz Jarnigan said, “It’s important for me that people know as we talk about the budget crisis across the Missouri Valley Conference schools and what we are going to do, I have stepped up and offered Southern Illinois as a host for any and all championships that we can host.”
“People wonder ‘Why would you want to take all of that on? It requires a lot of planning, and there is some expense,’ but the simple answer is when we say we are here to shine a bright light on the Southern Illinois community, we mean it. What everybody has gone through, financially and psychologically, we want to do it.”
SIU hosted the swimming championships for decades before it was moved to a neutral site for the past four years. In 2019 and 2020, this site was the Mizzou Aquatic Center in Columbia, Missouri, while in 2017 and 2018 it was held at the University of Iowa.
The university is home to the Shea Natatorium, which features a 10-lane, 50-meter long course pool that can be converted into two 8-lane, 25-yard short course pools. Additionally, the pool has a diving well including four one-meter diving boards, three, three-meter diving boards and a five-meter diving tower.
The Natatorium has enough seating to hold a maximum of 3,000 spectators. Comparatively, the Gabrielsen Natatorium, which was set to hold both the men’s and women’s D1 NCAA championships this year only has a capacity to hold 2,000 spectators.
Traditionally, Missouri State University has dominated the conference, winning 4-straight championship titles and 12 titles in the past 13 years. Their only championship loss in that span was to Southern Illinois by 1 point during the 2015-2016 season.
The Missouri Valley Conference is one of the oldest conferences in the entire NCAA across all divisions, and the second oldest D1 conference behind the Big 10. Currently, it has 10 member schools, including:
- Southern Illinois
- Bradley University
- Drake University
- University of Evansville
- Indiana State University
- Loyola University Chicago
- Missouri State University
- University of Northern Iowa
- Illinois State University
- Valparaiso University
Bradley, Drake, and Loyola University do not sponsor a swimming program for either gender, while the only schools sponsoring a program for men’s swimming are Missouri State, Southern Illinois, Evansville, and Valparaiso. The first three schools have men’s teams that participate in the Mid-American Conference Championship instead, while the Valparaiso men swim in the Summit League.
Additionally, the University of Arkansas, Little Rock competes in conference just for women’s swimming.
Valparaiso has a men’s program that competes in the Summit Leauge
And Evansville in Mid-America Conference
Thank you to SIU for stepping up and setting the example for other Universities to follow! Go Dawgs!
evansville has a men’s team as well that competes in the mid american conference