Championship History – Midwest Region

We are at the half way point with the conclusion of this article as we go around the DIII volleyball regions and look at the past champions for each conference. If you want to get a jump on everyone else, then don’t read this and just go to the end. I know this will work because I did this in all of my English classes. We’ve already covered the Central, and the Great Lakes and the Mid-Atlantic. I’m really not looking forward to how big the New England and New York Regions are but they are probably the region where I need the most education. The next paragraph is repeated from my first article. Read if you like.

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.

Today we’ve got the Midwest Region and my unresearched opinion is that these conferences will be pretty old and stable. I also started thinking about which regions I’ve actually visited. I visited Oshkosh for the 2016 championships. I’ve been to Washington-St. Louis (Central) a couple of times. I don’t think I’ve been to the Great Lakes Region but have been to Christopher Newport (Mid-Atlantic). Looking ahead, I think I’ve been shutout in the New England Region (they probably wouldn’t want me). I’ve been to Vassar in the New York Region for a school visit. Same is true for Washington & Lee (South) but no volleyball in either the New York or South Regions. In the West, I’ve actually visited each of the four conferences for matches. Maybe I should tell my wife that I want to catch a volleyball match in each of the 44 DIII conferences. I chuckle as I know how she would respond to that.

Sorry for that sidebar. In the Midwest we have four conferences – College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW), Midwest Conference, Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) and Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC). We also have a UAA team in Chicago that will be discussed when we get to the South Region. There is also Maranatha Baptist University who is one of the remaining few (2?) independent schools.

The CCIW was established in 1946 as the College Conference of Illinois and their website has 34 years of volleyball championship information. The name was changed in 1967 to recognize Carthage (they had moved to Wisconsin) and Carroll University. As you might guess, the conference only has schools from Illinois and Wisconsin. Of the nine original member schools, all remain except for Illinois College and Lake Forrest who are both now in the Midwest Conference. Carroll and North Park were added but both schools have been in the conference for over 50-years. So, yeah, pretty old and pretty stable. Just like me except for the stable part.

For this conference I decided to just look at the CCIW Tournament winners as they’ve had a tournament since 1986. Not all of those years meant winning the tournament got you an NCAA Tournament bid. Carthage is the defending champion, has 3 titles in the last 5-years and holds the record for most overall two championship wins due to NCAA sanctions. Millikin comes in with 4 titles including one in the last 5-years. Illinois Wesleyan has 3 titles including one that’s recent. With one each, we have Wheaton and Augustana. Hey, I’ve been to Wheaton, too. Just not for volleyball. It was actually a show choir competition if you can believe that. I know I can’t still to this day. Wait, maybe it was Wheaton High School? Okay, just never mind these last few sentences. Back to the CCIW and with schools like Carthage, Elmhurst, Millikin and IWU, this is a really strong volleyball conference. A few others are also programs you can’t sleep on if you find them on your schedule. As far as national champions, Elmhurst has 2 titles from the 1980s.

The Midwest Conference along with the next conference are going to be a step below the other two conferences in this region. Still, both of these conferences have some good volleyball programs. The Midwest Conference was established in 1921 and has one of the oldest volleyball archives in the nation going back 42-years. St. Norbert, which is leaving for the NACC next season, leads the conference in volleyball championships with 12 including one in the last 5-years. Cornell is second with 8 titles with 3 being recent. It’s really been these two schools that have come to my mind when discussing this conference, which I never do. With 42-years of champions, we have a number of other schools that have received a title. Illinois College and Lake Forest each have 5 followed by Beloit with 3. Knox has 2 along with Coe who is now in the American Rivers Conference. Monmouth is still around and they also have 2. Carroll is now in the CCIW but they have one Midwest title and rounding it out is Grinnell with one but they are your defending champions after pulling off a slight upset last year. There has been some movement in this conference but for now their most recent team that will be there in 2021 is Illinois College who came into the league in 1982.

Next up is the NACC, which is still a baby in the conference landscape having been established in 2006. Saying that, they’ve had an impressive string of stability with 11 of their original 12 schools still in the conference. They now stand at 14 teams with the addition of St. Norbert next year. Benedictine did flirt a bit with going to DII a few years back but reconfirmed their allegiance to the conference and DIII. The conference website has 14-years of data and their all-time leader in titles is Dominican with 4, including one in the last 5-years. Lakeland is second with 4 followed by Benedictine (2), Concordia Wisconsin (2), Aurora (2) and Edgewood (1). Aurora is your defending champion and both them and Concordia Wisconsin have 2 titles in the last 5-years. Outside the region, I feel like people should be aware of Aurora as they have been really good the last few years but Benedictine is actually their leader with NCAA Tournament appearances (17) and tournament wins (18). Benedictine actually made the NCAA Tournament in its first 13 years of existence.

The fourth and last conference in the Midwest Region is the WIAC, which was established in 1913 and all members are part of the University of Wisconsin college system. It’s been really stable as six of their original eight members are still competing. Both UW-Stout and UW-Eau Claire were added a few years after the conference started and that’s their eight members as of today. It’s a quite interesting conference as it’s rare to have public universities competing at DIII. Then to have all of their members be part of a state’s public college system is certainly unique. It should be pointed out they do have associate members that compete in other sports, which is pretty common in all conferences. In the early 70s the conference did add some associate schools that competed in volleyball like Carroll, Carthage, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison. For awhile the conference gave out multiple titles (DII, DIII-Small and DIII-Large), which just makes my job impossible. For purposes of this, I will ignore the DII schools and accept the DIII-Large champion over the DIII-Small champion. This conference has also given us two national championships; both won by UW-Whitewater.

The conference website goes back to 1971 and like I said, it’s difficult to narrow things down. For the most part I feel comfortable with these numbers but in 1983, the website only lists UW-Milwaukee as their champion but I don’t see them in the NCAA Tournament that year. Instead, other schools from the conference competed. So, I assume Milwaukee was still DII at the time, but I’m going with the conference website. Alright, maybe not a surprise in that Whitewater is the conference leader with 16 titles including 2 in the last 5-years. More of a surprise for the younger crowd is that La Crosse is second with 10 titles including 1 in the last 5-years. Madison, who is now in DI has 5 titles along with Oshkosh. Stevens Point is at 4 titles and they are the current defending champions. Tied at 3 is Eau Claire (one recent title) and Platteville. Rounding out the list with one title are River Falls, Stout and Milwaukee (now at DI). I’m only half way through my research but I’m willing to bet that this is the only conference in the nation where each of the current members have all won a volleyball title. You need quality, stability and longevity for this to occur and not many conferences have it.

Overall, we’ve had 4 national championships from the Midwest Region (Elmhurst and Whitewater each with 2). Coming in cold, I’d probably expect a few more but you have to remember that certain programs really dominated the volleyball landscape for decades early on. This region does have strong programs in Carthage, Elmhurst, IWU, Millikin, St. Norbert, Aurora, Benedictine, Whitewater, Oshkosh and that’s not to mention the other UW schools that always seem to step up. It also doesn’t mention the UAA school, Chicago. Looking at the conferences and you can’t ignore the CCIW and the WIAC. With the movement of St. Norbert from the Midwest to the NACC, I think you’d have to say that the NACC is the better of the two in volleyball. (They probably were even before the move.) Come tournament time, it’s always interesting to see what happens to the Midwest Region. They typically deserve more bids then they receive and the loser in that battle tends to be the WIAC. With the Central and Great Lakes getting deeper, it puts more pressure on the Midwest to keep up as these three regions often compete for at-large bids*.

* Although we all know that location doesn’t impact at-large bid selections.

Next up is the New England Region and to say I’m not looking forward to doing 8 conferences is an understatement.