Great Lakes Valley Conference History

Great Lakes Valley Conference

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A Brief History of
the Great Lakes Valley Conference

         The 14-member Great Lakes Valley Conference has made its name throughout the last 27 years as a power in NCAA Division II basketball. In the last few years, however, the GLVC has seen success in many sports, and the league can now claim itself as one of the nation's top in all NCAA Division II athletics.
         The 2005-06 academic year brings the addition of Drury University, the University of Missouri-Rolla, and Rockhurst University, increasing the GLVC from 11 to 14 members.
         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 formulation of the conference, ten schools have joined the league: 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-Rolla (2005), and Rockhurst (2005). Ashland and Kentucky State left the conference after the 1994 season, while IPFW left the league following the 2000-01 academic year.
         Along with its expansion came the hiring of the league's first full-time commissioner in 1996. In 2001, an associate commissioner was added to the full-time conference staff, and a part-time sports information director joined in 2004. The conference headquarters are located in downtown Indianapolis.
         The GLVC can claim schools in many of the Midwest’s major media markets, with schools in Milwaukee/Northern Illinois (UW-Parkside), Chicago (Lewis), Indianapolis (Indianapolis), Cincinnati (Northern Kentucky), Louisville (Bellarmine), Evansville (Southern Indiana), Owensboro (Kentucky Wesleyan), Kansas City (Rockhurst) and St. Louis (SIU Edwardsville/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. The GLVC sponsors more women’s golf teams that any other Division II league in the country, while GLVC baseball has featured the exclusiveness of using wood bats since 1999.
         The addition of SIU Edwardsville, Quincy, Wisconsin-Parkside, and Missouri-St. Louis in the mid-1990s allowed the GLVC to become an immediate national power in several sports such as men's and women's soccer, women's softball and tennis
         The conference expanded to include women's basketball in 1983-84 and immediately established a women's-men's doubleheader format in league play to ensure maximum exposure for both squads. GLVC basketball games take place on Thursday and Saturday nights in November, December, January and February. GLVC institutions have won 10 national championships in basketball. Kentucky Wesleyan leads all Division II institutions with eight men’s basketball titles, while Southern Indiana won the men’s crown in 1995 and finished as the runner-up in the 2004 tournament. Northern Kentucky’s women won the school’s first-ever national championship in 2000.
         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 Bertram Award to a distinguished alum who both succeeded while a GLVC student-athlete and excelled in accomplishments after graduation.