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The West Coast Conference is an NCAA collegiate athletic conference consisting of eight member schools in California, Oregon, and Washington. It was founded in 1952 as the California Basketball Association by a group of five schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, and became the West Coast Conference in 1956. All of the current members are private, religiously-affiliated institutions; four of the eight are Jesuit, and only Pepperdine is not Catholic. It is also a remarkably stable union in the constantly changing world of college athletics. The WCC has not had a school join or leave the conference since 1980. Only two conferences, the Ivy League and the Pac-10, have remained unchanged for a longer period of time.

The WCC participates in NCAA Division I and is considered to be one of the better mid-major conferences in the country. The conference sponsors 13 sports but does not include football as one of them. In fact, San Diego is the only conference member that still plays football at any level; the rest have all dropped the sport, some as early as the 1940s, before the conference existed (Gonzaga and Portland), and one as late as 2003 (Saint Mary's). The WCC's strongest sports historically have been soccer (nine national champions, including back-to-back women's soccer titles in 2001 and 2002) and tennis (five individual champions and one team champion). The conference has also made its presence felt nationally in men's basketball, with San Francisco winning two consecutive national titles in the 1950s with all-time great Bill Russell, Loyola Marymount's inspired NCAA tournament run in 1990 following the tragic death of Hank Gathers during that season's WCC championship tournament, and most recently Gonzaga's rise to national prominence since 1999's Cinderella run to the Elite 8. Gonzaga has made it to the NCAA tournament each year since then.

Current members

Institution Location Founded Affiliation Enrollment Year Joined
Gonzaga University Spokane, Washington 1887 Private/Catholic 5,043 1979
Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California 1865 Private/Catholic 7,104 1955
Pepperdine University Malibu, California 1937 Private/Church of Christ 6,053 1955
University of Portland Portland, Oregon 1901 Private/Catholic 3,000 1976
Saint Mary's College of California Moraga, California 1863 Private/Catholic 4,536 1952
University of San Diego San Diego, California 1949 Private/Catholic 6,452 1979
University of San Francisco San Francisco, California 1855 Private/Catholic 7,487 1952
Santa Clara University Santa Clara, California 1851 Private/Catholic 8,047 1952

Athletic logos and nicknames

Image:GonzagaBulldogs.GIF|Gonzaga Bulldogs Image:LMULions3.GIF|Loyola Marymount Lions Image:Pepperdine logo.gif|Pepperdine Waves Image:PortlandPilots4.GIF|Portland Pilots Image:stma-lg.gif|Saint Mary's Gaels Image:SanDiegoToreros8.GIF|San Diego Toreros Image:SanFranciscoDons.GIF|San Francisco Dons Image:SantaClaraBroncos2.GIF|Santa Clara Broncos

Former members

Sports

The WCC sponsors intercollegiate competition in men’s baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s golf, men's and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s tennis, women's rowing, and women’s volleyball.

Famous athletes

Some of the famous athletes who played collegiately in the WCC include:

Conference Arenas

School Basketball Arena Arena capacity
Gonzaga McCarthey Athletic Center 6,000
Loyola Marymount Gersten Pavilion 4,156
Pepperdine Firestone Fieldhouse 3,104
Portland Chiles Center 5,000
St. Mary's McKeon Pavilion 3,500
San Diego Jenny Craig Pavilion 5,100
San Francisco War Memorial Gymnasium 5,300
Santa Clara Leavey Center 6,000

External links

College athletics conferences | West Coast Conference

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "West Coast Conference".

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