The Mountain West Conference is adding men’s swimming and diving and men’s soccer to become the 20th and 21st sponsored sports in the conference. Both sports will be added in the 2026-2027 season.
“The addition of men’s soccer and men’s swimming and diving to the Mountain West represents a bold step forward in our commitment to broad-based excellence,” said Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez. “These sports not only elevate our competitive profile but also reflect the growing interest and investment from our member institutions. We’re proud to support student-athletes in these disciplines and excited to see the impact they’ll have on our Conference’s future.”
Men’s swimming and diving returns to the conference for the first time since 2011. The conference has announced that five men’s programs are set to compete including Air Force, Grand Canyon, Hawaii, UNLV, and Wyoming. Hawaii is set to become a full member of the Mountain West on July 1, 2026. Grand Canyon joined the conference a year early, joining for the current 2025-2026 school year.
This past season the Air Force, Grand Canyon, UNLV, and Wyoming men’s swimming and diving programs competed at the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Championships alongside Cal Baptist and Seattle. UNLV captured the WAC title with 802 points while Air Force was 3rd with 638.5 points.
The Hawaii men will join the Mountain West after most recently competing in the Big West Conference Championships where they were 2nd this past season, only 52 points behind first place team UC-Santa Barbara.
The San Diego State women captured the 2025 Mountain West Championship title with 1283 points, 105 points ahead of 2nd place UNLV.
LETS GOOOO
This is awesome news. I can tell you first hand how great it was for both men’s and women’s teams to be at the Conference Championships together!!
Do we think this will affect in any the way the MPSF and Big West? Each conference will have 4 men’s teams remaining if I counted correctly, which may be considered too small to operate on their own. BUT, all of these teams are combined programs, with their women competing in the same conferences, respectively. So IMO it makes sense to change nothing.
It’s all so messy, I’d be shocked if there aren’t more related changes between now and July 2026 when this formally takes effect.
The reality is that all of these west coast conferences need to just jam together into one conference, but the new mid-major qualifying rules reduces incentive to do so.
Did I read that conferences have to have at least 5 teams to earn a chance for AQ? That could be the incentive.
Yes that’s correct.
Replying to myself because I cannot edit: it looks like Cal Baptist is moving from the MPSF to the Big West in 2026.
MPSF – Pacific, Incarnate Word, Saint Mary’s (new in 2026)
Big West – UCSD, UCSB, Seattle, CSUB, Cal Baptist
The American conference did operate for a few seasons with only 2 men’s teams, so it is feasible for MPSF to remain with only 3 teams. It is probably more financially and logistically sound to keep the men and women together than to make them travel to separate meets.
As of now UCSD will stay in Big West
How does NIL work at the Service Academies?
That’s a great question. Unless there’s been more recent developments that I’ve missed, the story has always been that they cannot. Individuals (student-athletes or not) at service academies are considered federal employees (via their respective branches) and federal law prohibits members of the military from using public office for private gain.
There’s been some pushback about ‘hey, the military spends all this money on advertising…why not spend some of that on advertising through their athletes?’
And (without getting too political), of course there’s the current political climate where a lot of folks are saying “I dare you” about long-held federal laws, regulations, customs, and traditions, and the courts are often saying “it’s whatever” in response, so unclear how that might… Read more »
Excellent!
Wow this is great news! Air Force is looking SCARY good right now they will dominate the MW
Long time coming. Good on the MW for making the right decision to add it back. Helps out the staff’s of the programs to only prepare for one week of conference championship season.
Huzzah 🙌