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The Big West Conference has decided that it will no longer host a Men’s or Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship Meet after it lost half of its membership in the last year. When UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, and Cal State Northridge cut their swimming programs, it left just 3 teams in the Big West: Cal-Poly, UC-Santa Barbara, and the University of the Pacific.
Luckily, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation has stepped up to at least partially fill that hole, as it has added Women’s Swimming to its roster of sports.
The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, or MPSF, was formed in 1992 to meet the needs of West Coast Olympic-Sports teams that had been alienated from their own conferences due to sports being cut. In total, 31 teams participate in the MPSF in sports that include men’s soccer, men’s and women’s water polo, men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s indoor track, men’s volleyball, and women’s lacrosse. Teams are not required to participate in MPSF competition if their primary conference sponsors that sport. For example, several Pac-10 teams, like Oregon and Arizona, participate in MPSF indoor track & field because their conference only sponsors the outdoor season.
Cal-Poly, UC-SB, and UoP will be joined by Loyola Marymount and the University of Seattle from the Pacific Collegiate Swim Conference, Cal State Bakersfield and Northern Colorado from Conference USA, and University of San Diego from the Western Athletic Conference.
The conference will jump right into swimming without missing a beat, as the conference he first MPSF Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship will be held next February in the famed Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.
According to Collegeswimming.com, a few likely possibilities for the men’s team include Conference USA and the Mountain West Conference.
Conference USA currently has 5 member men’s teams (SMU, Hawaii, Cal State Bakersfield, North Dakota and East Carolina) but still does not sponsor a true Championship (instead referring to it as an “invitational”). The Mountain West Conference currently has 6 members, including standout programs at BYU, Air Force, and Wyoming.
Either conference would receive a huge boost from the addition of 3 teams, although from a purely financial standpoint, the MWC seems to make the most sense in terms of limiting travel costs. Conference USA has teams in all 4 corners of the country, and annual trips from Texas to North Dakota to North Carolina to Hawaii could surely strain a travel budget.
The Big West’s decision has both positives and negatives. Obviously, without true conference sponsorship of the sports, other Big West schools have less motivation to try and restart or save struggling programs. On the other hand, the MPSF is an extremely well-run conference, and have posted National Championship teams in several sports, including last year’s Women’s Water Polo (USC) and Indoor Track & Field (Oregon) National Champions.
A conglomerated conference like this is also able to draw in and absorb teams from any other West Coast conferences who cut the sport, thus giving surviving teams a competitive outlet.
