MacMurray’s closure shakes up SLIAC, UMAC

Since Iowa Wesleyan joined the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 2013, the SLIAC has been a 10-team league. That will soon be changing.

MacMurray College, a member of the SLIAC since 1990, announced at the end of March that the school would close its doors at the end of the spring semester.

MacMurray's Boar of Trustees voted unanimously to close the 174-year-old institution, a decision which will directly effect IW as well as the other remaining SLIAC members.

'MacMurray College faced the same challenges that institutions like Iowa Wesleyan and other small private institutions continue to face across the country, particularly those with enrollments under 1,000 students and campuses located in rural communities,” says IW Athletic Director Derek Zander. 'During my time at Iowa Wesleyan, I have developed personal relationships with many of their staff and I was disheartened to see the news about their closure.”

Along with being a SLIAC rival, MacMurray is in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference, the league IW plays in for football. Greenville University will now be the only SLIAC school to play conference games against IW in football.

The Tiger athletic teams will have to find a few more games to replace MacMurray on the schedule. The Tigers usually play the Highlanders once during football season and twice apiece in volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball, softball and baseball.

The rest of the UMAC teams will replace their regularly scheduld MacMurray games with non-league games against other UMAC opponents. The Tigers will now play Crown College twice during the year, once at homecoming on Saturday, Oct. 3, and once on the road, on Saturday, Nov. 7.

The SLIAC, according to Zander, has elected to give each institution the autonomy to schedule non-conference contests in place of their originally scheduled games against MacMurray.

MacMurray's departure, of course, adds another element to the roller coaster that is the spring sports season. Zander says due in part to the COVID-19 fallout, the UMAC and SLIAC will likely just stay put with one less tema moving forward.

'I have been in regular communication with the SLIAC and UMAC since MacMurray's announcement a few weeks ago,” Zander says. 'As of now, the UMAC and SLIAC will not add other institutions to our respective conferences. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and these unprecedented times, we believe that the proper thing to do is move forward with our current conference members. If any institutions express interest in our conference, I would anticipate that we would entertain that idea of adding an institution to our conference but it is never a guarantee. There are always multiple items that need to be considered when evaluating the addition of a potential member to the conference.”

MacMurray's absense from the two conferences will be felt right away when fall sports begin. The Highlanders have finished in the top four in each of the last five UMAC football seasons, and they made the conference tournament in volleyball, falling to Westminster in the tournament final.

There's a chance a few Highlanders may make their way north to Mt. Pleasant for the 2020-21 school year. The two schools are of similar size and the University will be working to make it an easy transition for former MacMurray students if they would like to continue their education at IW.

'MacMurray and Iowa Wesleyan are very similar institutions,” Zander says. 'There is great value in the holistic experience that a small, four-year private institution can provide students. With that being said, Iowa Wesleyan provides an opportunity where MAC students can have a similar experience at IW. We are in conversations with a few of their students and we hope that they will choose Iowa Wesleyan to continue with their academic and athletic endeavors.”