9 Schools•Division III•Est. 1922
The American Rivers Conference was founded on December 8, 1922, when representatives of twelve colleges met in Iowa and organized the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Judge Hubert Utterback of Des Moines became its first commissioner the following year. The league was renamed the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1927 and took its current name on August 9, 2018, honoring the Mississippi to the east and the Missouri to the west, the rivers that frame the state where it began.
Growth came in deliberate steps. Women's sports became part of the conference in 1982. John T. Cochrane was hired in 2001 as the first commissioner to hold the job full time, and the following year the league introduced the All-Sports Trophy, awarded to the member showing the greatest overall excellence across its athletics program. In 2016 the conference crossed the state line for the first time, adding Nebraska Wesleyan.
The Olympic thread runs long. Coe's Clem Wilson competed at the 1912 Stockholm Games, and Charles Lighter arrived at Coe in his shadow, winning every event he entered as a freshman and tying the world record in the 440 hurdles in 1915. Simpson's Kip Janvrin won five national championships and twelve conference titles before competing in the 2000 Olympic decathlon, and Simpson named its spring invitational in his honor.
Rivalries give the calendar its shape. Loras and the University of Dubuque sit in the same city and meet as crosstown opponents in basketball and football. Coe and Wartburg have grown into a fixture of the fall schedule, a game Coe players have called their biggest. Coe's football series with Cornell is the oldest west of the Mississippi River.
Official Website
The American Rivers Conference was founded on December 8, 1922, when representatives of twelve colleges met in Iowa and organized the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Judge Hubert Utterback of Des Moines became its first commissioner the following year. The league was renamed the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1927 and took its current name on August 9, 2018, honoring the Mississippi to the east and the Missouri to the west, the rivers that frame the state where it began.
Growth came in deliberate steps. Women's sports became part of the conference in 1982. John T. Cochrane was hired in 2001 as the first commissioner to hold the job full time, and the following year the league introduced the All-Sports Trophy, awarded to the member showing the greatest overall excellence across its athletics program. In 2016 the conference crossed the state line for the first time, adding Nebraska Wesleyan.
The Olympic thread runs long. Coe's Clem Wilson competed at the 1912 Stockholm Games, and Charles Lighter arrived at Coe in his shadow, winning every event he entered as a freshman and tying the world record in the 440 hurdles in 1915. Simpson's Kip Janvrin won five national championships and twelve conference titles before competing in the 2000 Olympic decathlon, and Simpson named its spring invitational in his honor.
Rivalries give the calendar its shape. Loras and the University of Dubuque sit in the same city and meet as crosstown opponents in basketball and football. Coe and Wartburg have grown into a fixture of the fall schedule, a game Coe players have called their biggest. Coe's football series with Cornell is the oldest west of the Mississippi River.
Official Website