Mountain West to Add Men’s Swimming Championships in 2026-27

Mountain West to Add Men’s Swimming Championships in 2026-27

The Mountain West Conference is including males’s swimming and diving (in addition to males’s soccer) as a sponsored sport within the 2026-27 educational yr.

The convention made the announcement Wednesday. It’s a reinstatement of the game, which the convention had provided championships in till 2011. Men’s soccer and males’s swimming are the twentieth and twenty first sponsored sports activities for the convention.

“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,” Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez stated in a press release. “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.”

The Mountain West is the primary Division I convention so as to add males’s swimming and diving for the reason that Ohio Valley Conference in 2023. The inaugural area will embody the United States Air Force Academy, Grand Canyon University, University of Hawaii at Manoa, UNLV and Wyoming.

Air Force, Wyoming and UNLV joined the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) this yr as affiliate members. Grand Canyon competes within the Big West Conference, as does Hawaii, amongst quite a lot of applications that appear to slosh round between conferences at common intervals.

The closing Mountain West men’s swimming and diving championships in 2011 included UNLV, Wyoming and Air Force in a six-team convention (in addition to BYU, Utah and TCU). UNLV received the final seven league titles, from 2005-11, greater than half of his 12-year stint with the convention. UNLV enters the MPSF because the winner of the final 5 Western Athletic Conference titles.

The Mountain West girls’s swimming and diving championships featured 10 establishments final yr, the title received by San Diego State for the fourth straight yr.