The Summit League facts for kids
The Summit League is a NCAA conference that plays in the NCAA Division I. The member universities and colleges are in the Midwestern United States, plus one member in Colorado. Their headquarters are in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Illinois
The league once sponsored football, but dropped the sport after the 1984 season. All four Summit League members that have football teams now play in the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
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
Currently, The Summit League has nine full members.
| School | Location | Founded | Type | Nickname | Joined |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Denver | Denver, Colorado | 1864 | Private | Pioneers | 2013 |
| Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) | Fort Wayne, Indiana | 1964 | Public | Mastodons | 2007 |
| Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) | Indianapolis, Indiana | 1969 | Public | Jaguars | 1998 |
| North Dakota State University | Fargo, North Dakota | 1890 | Public | Bison | 2007 |
| University of Nebraska Omaha (Omaha) | Omaha, Nebraska | 1908 | Public | Mavericks | 2012 |
| Oral Roberts University | Tulsa, Oklahoma | 1963 | Private | Golden Eagles | 1997, 2014 |
| University of South Dakota | Vermillion, South Dakota | 1862 | Public | Coyotes | 2011 |
| South Dakota State University | Brookings, South Dakota | 1881 | Public | Jackrabbits | 2007 |
| Western Illinois University | Macomb, Illinois | 1899 | Public | Leathernecks | 1982 |
Associate members
The Summit League has one "associate" member that plays three sports in the conference. (The NCAA counts men's and women's teams in the same sport as playing two different sports.)
| School | Location | Founded | Type | Nickname | Summit League sports |
Joined | Main conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern Illinois University | Charleston, Illinois | 1895 | Public | Panthers | Men's soccer Men's swimming and diving Women's swimming and diving |
2005 (all) | OVC |
Former members
No fewer than 21 schools have been full members, but are no longer in the league.
Images for kids
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Locations of current Summit League full member institutions.
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Mid-Continent Conference logo, 1982–2007
