The NCAA Division I Missouri Valley Conference announced the University of Missouri as the host of its 2018 swimming & diving championships, marking the 3rd-straight year where the conference has used a neutral-site host. The last two championships were hosted at the University of Iowa. Missouri State, winners of 10 of the last 11 conference championships, has never hosted the meet on campus, but will act as hosts for this year’s meet. Columbia, a 3 hour drive from Springfield, about halves the distance from Iowa City, where the meet was hosted at the University of Iowa for the last 2 years.
7 of the Missouri Valley’s 10 full members sponsor women’s swimming, with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock participating as an associate member in swimming.
Team Results – 2018 Missouri Valley Conference Championships
| 1. | Missouri State | 799 |
| 2. | Southern Illinois | 672.5 |
| 3. | Northern Iowa | 487.5 |
| 4. | Indiana State | 477 |
| 5. | Illinois State | 370.5 |
| 6. | Little Rock | 363.5 |
| 7. | Evansville | 225 |
| 8. | Valparaiso | 110 |
None of the 8 swimming member teams have an indoor 8-lane pool with both significant spectator seating and enough pool space for warmups and warmdowns. Of the 8 teams, the only 3 that train in facilities with warmup/warmdown space are Indiana State, who train at a 50-meter municipal facility; and Southern Illinois, which has a 10-lane, 50-meter pool and two 8-lane, 25-yard pools (built in 1977). Southern Illinois has hosted a number of previous Missouri Valley Championship meets, with seating expandable to hold up to 3,000 people.
Arkansas-Little Rock also trains in an 8-lane, 50-meter pool, but offers basically no spectator seating.
The university of Missouri offers a full 50-meter pool, a separate diving well, and spectator seating for 1,000. It served as the host off the 2006, 2009, and 2012 Big 12 Conference Championship meets, and the 2016 SEC Championship meet.
UA-Little Rock also trains in an 8 lane 50 meter pool(in fact their pool was designed off the SIU facility), so they would have the warm down space, but not much else.
Good catch – I only checked into the 7 full-time MVC members, forgot to look at UALR. Updated above.
UALR also has a pretty noticeable current IIRC. More so in long course than short course though. I got my first NCAA cut in that pool.
It was also the site of the 2016 SEC Championships