The Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. Its fifteen member institutions are located in the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri. There are also thirteen associate members that participate in sports not sponsored by their home conferences.
History Formation
The GLVC grew out of discussions that started in 1982 between the athletic directors of Kentucky Wesleyan College, Bellarmine College (today Bellarmine University), and Indiana State University at Evansville (renamed University of Southern Indiana in 1985), with the goal of forming a men's basketball conference. The discussions eventually included Indiana Central University (renamed University of Indianapolis in 1986), Saint Joseph's College, and Ashland College (today Ashland University). On July 7, 1978, at a meeting in Louisville hosted by Bellarmine, these six schools formed the GLVC, with the intention of competing in the 1978–79 season. Ashland, though considered a charter member, did not begin conference play until the league's second season, in 1979–80. From the time of its founding, the GLVC has been a member of NCAA Division II.
While the origins of the conference's name are lost to history, its initial Ohio-Indiana-Kentucky footprint was bordered by the Great Lakes in the north and the Ohio Valley in the south. Following Southern Indiana's departure in July 2023, Indianapolis is the only remaining charter member. On June 24, 2026, Indianapolis announced that it will leave the GLVC for the Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC) effective July 1, 2027.UIndy Athletics Announces Move to G-MAC in 2027–28, https://athletics.uindy.edu/news/2026/6/24/general-uindy-athletics-announces-move-to-g-mac-in-2027-28.aspx, University of Indianapolis Athletics. Retrieved June 26, 2026.
The GLVC has been led by a full-time commissioner since 1996, first Carl McAloose (1996–2000), then Jim Naumovich (2000–present). The conference office is located in Indianapolis. From 1978 to 1996, the Faculty Athletics Representatives (FARs) of the member institutions were responsible for operating the conference. The FARs (rather than the athletic directors) still cast the institutional votes at meetings where the presidents and chancellors are not present. This feature gives the GLVC a governance structure that is unique among Division I and Division II conferences.
Though conceived as a men's basketball league, the GLVC from the start planned to sponsor championships in golf, tennis, baseball, cross country, and track & field. The conference crowned golf and tennis champions in 1978-79 and added cross country and baseball the following year. Soccer became the sixth sport rather than track & field, with the first conference tournament held in 1980. In 1982, when the demise of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) brought women's college athletics under the NCAA, the GLVC began to sponsor women's sports. Within two years, the conference added women's championships in basketball, tennis, cross country, volleyball, and softball.
Expansion of membership and sport sponsorship The conference experienced steady growth through the first three decades of its existence, expanding from six members to sixteen. The first addition was Lewis University in 1980, followed in 1984 by Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW; the athletic program is now Purdue Fort Wayne), then Northern Kentucky University in 1985 and Kentucky State University in 1989. The conference lost its first members with the departure of Ashland and Kentucky State, effective summer 1995, but increased in size when Quincy University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and the University of Wisconsin–Parkside began competition that fall, followed by the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) one year later. These changes initiated a westward shift in the GLVC's geographical footprint that has continued to the present.
The 1990s also featured an expansion in sports sponsorship. In 1995–96 the GLVC crowned its first champions in women's soccer and in men's and women's track and field. Women's golf was added in 1998–99, followed by men's and women's indoor track and field in 1999–2000. These additions increased the total number of conference sports from eleven to seventeen.
After IPFW left in 2001 to move to Division I, the GLVC considered further expansion, but not before redefining conference membership in 2005 to require the athletic program of each member to include seven core sports (men's and women's basketball, women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, softball, and baseball). The eleven members at the time all sponsored these sports, and subsequent new members would be required to sponsor them as well. Previously, the GLVC had no sports sponsorship requirement other than the NCAA Division II minimum (that every member must sponsor at least ten sports, including men's and women's basketball). The conference began awarding the Commissioner's Cup to the member institution with the greatest success across the seven core sports, while continuing to award its All-Sports Trophy to the most successful program overall.
In the fall of 2005, the GLVC welcomed three more members—Drury University, Rockhurst University, and the University of Missouri-Rolla (known as Missouri University of Science and Technology, or Missouri S&T, since 2008). SIUE left for Division I and the Ohio Valley Conference in 2008, but the conference continued to grow with the additions of Maryville University and the University of Illinois Springfield, which began GLVC competition in the fall of 2009. The GLVC reached sixteen members with the admission of William Jewell College, which began competing in fall 2011.
As the conference continued to grow, basketball remained its strongest sport, and the conference tournament, usually including both genders at the same neutral site, became its signature event. A GLVC team played in the championship game of the NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament in eleven consecutive seasons (1993–94 through 2003–4). Kentucky Wesleyan, winner of four men's national championships prior to the creation of the GLVC, won four more as a conference member, while Southern Indiana, Bellarmine, and Drury won one apiece, and Northern Kentucky won two women's national championships. Meanwhile, the GLVC became the leading Division II conference in swimming and diving. During its first decade in the conference, Drury won ten men's national championships and four women's national championships in the sport. After men's and women's swimming and diving became conference sports in 2013–14, the annual GLVC swimming and diving meet grew to become the most financially lucrative of the conference's championship events, surpassing the basketball tournament.
The admission of William Jewell, approved in October 2009, gave the conference six football-playing members (along with Indianapolis, Kentucky Wesleyan, St. Joseph's, Quincy, and Missouri S&T), the minimum number needed to sponsor the sport. This set in motion plans to crown a football champion, ultimately starting in fall 2012. The addition of football in the GLVC's 35th year of competition was a historic move, as no conference at any level of the NCAA (Division I, II, or III) founded without football had ever added it after existing for so long as a non-football conference. Before competition began, the original six football-playing members were joined by new full member McKendree University and the GLVC's first associate members, Central State University and Urbana University, to give the conference nine teams for its initial football season. Though they competed in the GLVC for just one year, Central State and Urbana eventually were followed by nineteen other schools admitted to the league as associates in one or more sports while maintaining full membership elsewhere.
Just as the GLVC was adding football, the conference lost two of its premier basketball programs. In the fall of 2012, Northern Kentucky moved to Division I and the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN), and one year later, Kentucky Wesleyan left to become a charter member of the newly formed Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC). Meanwhile, the GLVC welcomed Truman State University into the conference, to begin competition in 2013–14. The additions of McKendree (coinciding with the departure of Northern Kentucky) and Truman State (coinciding with the departure of Kentucky Wesleyan) kept the GLVC at sixteen members.
In 2014, a unique interconference football partnership with the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) allowed Lincoln University and Southwest Baptist University to join the GLVC in football while otherwise remaining MIAA members. That autumn, the GLVC became the first NCAA Division II conference to create an inclusive league-wide digital streaming network – the GLVC Sports Network (GLVCSN), which subsequently broadcast football and all other conference sports.
Drury and Bellarmine started wrestling programs for the 2016–17 season, enabling the conference to add wrestling as its 21st championship sport. The initial seven-team GLVC wrestling lineup also included Indianapolis, Maryville, McKendree, Truman State, and Wisconsin–Parkside, all former Division II wrestling independents.
The following year, the GLVC announced the addition of men's lacrosse as its 22nd championship sport, in partnership with the Gulf South Conference (GSC) and Peach Belt Conference (PBC). The initial six-team lineup for spring 2018 included Indianapolis, Maryville, and four southern associate members (Young Harris College, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the University of Montevallo, and Shorter University). The partnership lasted for three seasons, after which the GLVC and GSC-PBC each had enough lacrosse-playing members to offer separate championships in the sport.
Recent history Charter member St. Joseph's College closed in May 2017 because of financial troubles. One year later, Wisconsin–Parkside left the GLVC to join the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC). Their departures reduced the conference to fourteen members.
In fall 2019 conference membership returned to 16 with the addition of two schools from the MIAA, Southwest Baptist (elevated from football-only associate to full membership) and Lindenwood University. Their admission voided the MIAA-GLVC football partnership of the previous five seasons (2014 through 2018) and resulted in Lincoln rejoining MIAA football. After just one year the conference reverted to fifteen members, as charter member Bellarmine moved to Division I and the ASUN, effective fall 2020.
In 2019 the GLVC and G-MAC established the annual America's Crossroads Bowl (later rebranded as the Albanese Candy Bowl) in Hobart, Indiana, featuring their highest-ranking football teams not qualifying for the NCAA Division II playoffs. In the 2021 and 2022 seasons, members of the two conferences also played a two-game crossover in the third and fourth Saturdays of the football season.