Championship History – Central Region

This blog has primarily catered to the West Region but I’ve tried to open it up at times to mixed results. One problem I have when I do this is just the amount of data/stats/stuff that is out there. I get bogged down and who wants a bogged blog? My latest project was suffering the same fate but I’ve decided to cut it up in pieces and then spread it out over time. What is this latest project? Well, if you are reading this then you are most likely a parent of a DIII volleyball player or someone that has a connection with DIII in some way. Maybe a player or a coach or a former parent or just another crazy that loves DIII volleyball. One thing we probably all have in common is that we primarily know what we see and are around, which makes our DIII knowledge regionalized. Even in my case, I’m always amazed I can stumble across a DIII school that I had no idea was a DIII school (or even a school). Heck, there are conferences I scratch my head on. So, I wanted to become more familiar with the conferences and the schools that play in those conferences. My thought was to look at the past conference winners across the nation and sort of get an idea of the powers within those conferences. Maybe also look at the past powers. As I went along, I also discovered that I was gaining insight into the migration of schools between the conferences. Also, as I went along, I got bogged down because there is just a lot of conferences and schools out there and some are not as good at archiving the data as I had hoped. So, this will be my first attempt at carving the data up and trying to present the data in a, hopefully, timely manner.

There are now (as of today and maybe not tomorrow) 44 DIII volleyball conferences with automatic qualifiers. There are now (as of today and definitely not tomorrow) 8 regions so let’s carve this information up by regions starting with the Central. (My apologies to Ricky Nelson as this will all be a refresher for him.) I will get to the other regions down the road so make sure you check back at least 12 times daily.

The Central Region consists of 4 conferences – American Rivers, Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC), St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) and the Upper Midwest.

The American Rivers Conference (ARC) was established in 1922 and immediately you get a sense that this entire “sports” thing has been around for a while. For most of that time the conference was known as the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference until undergoing a name change in August of 2018. Now, I’m just interested in women’s volleyball and just know that I rely on the school’s athletic website for my information, but I found champions for the last 38 years, which is going to be one of the longer time periods we come across. The current historical leader in championships for women’s volleyball in the ARC is Central (Iowa) with 12 plus an additional shared championship. (Note that for champions I tried to get the conference tournament champion when it existed and the regular season champion when it did not.)

Central (Iowa) was actually a major player in all of NCAA volleyball back at the end of the last century with three consecutive championships from 1998 to 2000. With that said, they have not won a conference championship in the last 5-years. In that time period the current alpha dog would be Wartburg who has a total of 8 championships over the last 38 years. And, now that I’ve made Wartburg the ARC alpha dog, it should be pointed out that Dubuque has actually won the last two conference championships so there is definitely some competition in this conference that you won’t always see as we go through the other 43. Simpson is actually tied with Wartburg for second overall with those 8 championships followed by Dubuque with 4 overall. Loras is next with 2 followed by William Penn (1 plus a shared championship) and then Cornell and Coe each with one each. If you are confused by William Penn just know you should be as they have moved to NAIA. Cornell is also now in the Midwest Conference. Since 1982, new members are Coe and Nebraska Wesleyan. Loras returned to the conference in 1986 after a 32-year gap.

Looking at the MIAC next and they are truly a powerhouse volleyball conference with a number of strong programs. When I started at this DIII thing nearly a decade ago it was pretty much St. Thomas that I knew of and later Gustavus Adolphus. Other programs have been stepping up their play and we now know that the conference has three strong “Saint” schools (Thomas, Benedict and Olaf). The conference is another old one as they were established in 1920 and I was able to find volleyball data back to 1981 (Go Macalester!). That’s 39 years and over that time it’s not too surprising to see that St. Thomas has the most volleyball championships with 12 with three of those being shared. Saint Benedict is next with 8 (2 shared) then Gustavus Adolphus (7) followed by St. Olaf (6) and Concordia-Minnesota (4). Bethel has two championships (1 shared) and we have solo championships for Macalester (first and only back in 1981), St. Catherine and St. Mary’s (MN). What’s surprising, based on their recent success, is that Augsburg doesn’t have a single volleyball championship in their history. It’s actually (also) surprising how stable this conference has been over the years, which is ironic because this is the conference that is actually kicking out St. Thomas because their football team is too good. That’s right, after this year, their leader in volleyball championships will be heading to DI. I guess it should also be pointed out that St. Thomas has the only national championship for this conference (back in 2012).

Looking back over just the last 5-years and we can see that Gustavus Adolphus leads the pack with 3 championships while St. Thomas (the defending champion) and St. Benedict each have one. Losing St. Thomas will definitely hurt the quality of this conference but there is just so much quantity that it’s not going to matter. Three other schools won 20 matches last year (Augsburg, St. Benedict and St. Olaf) and you always have to be concerned with Bethel. Gustavus Adolphus had a down year but was still a tough team to play and should bounce back nicely. Bottom line, the MIAC is currently the power conference of the Central Region. With regards to movement, since 1981, Carleton returned in 83 after a 58-year gap and they picked up new members in Bethel (77), St. Catherine (83) and Saint Benedict (85). St. Scholastica will join the conference next year.

My impression of the SLIAC is about the opposite of the MIAC. I know they will get their one Automatic Qualifier (AQ) in each year but it’s consistently a conference that has one of the worst winning percentages nationally. With that said, these are the types of conferences that I really want to look at because I really don’t know a lot about them. The SLIAC was established in 1989 so it’s really the baby of the Central Region. Looking at their history and we have data back to 1990 so that’s 30 years of data. (I guess this baby isn’t really a baby anymore.)

Over these past 30 years, there have been only 4 schools that have won championships – Webster (12), Fontbonne (9), Greenville (5) and Westminster (4). Over the last 5 years, it’s been Greenville with 4 championships so you can see that this program has really stepped it up to become the power in the conference. Of course, the defending champion is Westminster but it should be noted that during the regular season Greenville has won outright or had a piece of 9 of the last 10 regular season titles. I did want to look closer at the standings from this conference and I was immediately surprised to see that Greenville had a 22-win season followed by Westminster with 19. When you look deeper, however, you’ll find that none of the 10 teams had a winning record outside of conference play, which is really a telling statistic. No major movement in this conference but Iowa Wesleyan will be moving to the NAIA next year. The conference did have some weirdness in the mid to late 2000s when 6 programs joined but only two remain (Eureka and Spalding). (Note – See what I mean about not knowing all of the schools? We all knew about Eureka and Spalding, right?)

The final Central Region conference is the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC). The UMAC was established in 1972 (as the Twin Rivers Conference) and I could find conference champions starting with 1982. The hiccup is that the UMAC only became a DIII conference since 2008 so I will only consider the last 12 years. I guess this is the true DIII baby of the Central Region.

The UMAC has really been dominated over the last 12-years by Northwestern-St. Paul as they have 9 volleyball championships and 4 of the last 5. St. Scholastica does have 2 championships but they will be moving to the MIAC next year so that will eliminate some depth from this conference. The other championship belongs to Minnesota-Morris who took home the prize in 2018. That leaves 6 other programs that have never won a DIII volleyball championship so that really makes this conference extremely top heavy. Prior to 2008, there were other programs that did well but it’s interesting that the move to DIII really hasn’t translated their success to this division. Since 2008 two programs have joined in North Central (MN) and UW-Superior.

One Central Region program I didn’t mention is Washington-St. Louis, which is one of the big powers in DIII volleyball. They play in the University Athletic Association (UAA) that consists of schools from every region except the West. I’ll tackle the UAA in the South Region article (I think).

Taken as a whole, the Central Region strongest volleyball conference top to bottom would have to be the MIAC. There are a number of strong programs in this region with most coming out of this conference. Historically, we can’t forget about the Central (Iowa) program, which reside in the ARC, with three national championships to their name. For a few months, we still have St. Thomas out of the MIAC. As we’ll see later, Washington-St. Louis is going to add significantly to the national championship tally for the Central Region. Over the last 19 years (since 2001), and including Washington-St. Louis, there have been 4 national champions from this region so nothing to sneeze at here. Looking at the last 5-years and the teams to focus on from this region, we have Dubuque and Wartburg out of the ARC. We have Greenville and Westminster out of the SLIAC and Northwestern-St. Paul and Minnesota-Morris out of the Upper Midwest. The MIAC is deeper with teams like Saint Benedict, Gustavus Adolphus, St. Olaf, Augsburg and we can even throw in Concordia (MN) and Bethel. We can’t forget about the UAA’s Washington-St. Louis, as well.

Next up is the Great Lakes Region.