The Mississippi Valley Conference is a high-school athletic conference whose members are located in the metropolitan areas of eastern region of the U.S. state of Iowa, including Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Iowa City and Waterloo-Cedar Falls. The conference is divided into two divisions: the Mississippi division and the Valley division. Division assignments rotate every two years, and are not geographically-based. At present the MVC comprises all 4A schools with the exception of Dubuque Wahlert, which is categorized as 3A school. Cedar Rapids Xavier, when admitted to the MVC, was a 3A school, but became a 4A school beginning with the 2008-09 school year. As of 2014-2015, Xavier switched back to 3A and Western Dubuque high school, also a 3A school, beginning in 2019.
Member schools
There are 16 member schools of the Mississippi Valley Conference:
Mississippi Division
Valley Division
History
Since its founding, the Mississippi Valley Conference was a leaguecomposed of metropolitan schools in eastern Iowa. Until 1969, the MVC also included Quad-Cityarea schools in both Iowa andIllinois; this list included Davenport High and Davenport West in Iowa; and Illinois Quad-City area schools East Moline, Moline and Rock Island. Clinton High School was also a member of the conference, as were Jefferson and Washington of Cedar Rapids, Iowa City High and Dubuque Senior. Cedar Rapids Kennedy joined immediately upon its opening in 1967. The league was reorganized in 1969, with the five Quad-City area schools leaving to form a new league. The six remaining schools were joined by newcomers Bettendorf, Muscatine and Iowa City West. Early in 1970, the newly opened Dubuque Hempstead was admitted to the conference. One member - Muscatine - gained infamy during the 1970s when it lost 44 consecutive football games, including 40 straight league games between 1973 and 1977.1 The league reorganized again in 1978 when Bettendorf, Clinton and Muscatine left to join the newly formed Mississippi Athletic Conference; Dubuque Wahlert joined at that time to make the MVC an eight-team conference. Waterloo East, Waterloo West, Cedar Falls, and Cedar Rapids Regis joined the conference in 1992. Regis was later merged with Cedar Rapids LaSalle High School to form Cedar Rapids Xavier High School. Periodically conference membership is reviewed based on school population trends.2 In 2016, Liberty, a new high school part of the Iowa City Community School District, applied for membership in the Mississippi Valley Conference. In January 2017, Western Dubuque accepted an invitation to join the league, joining from the WaMaC Conference. The additions, to become effective in 2018-2019 mark the first expansion of the conference since 1992, with the only change coming in 1998 with Xavier's opening.
Although the member schools field freshman — and in some cases, junior varsity — teams in many of the above-mentioned sports, conference championships are determined at sophomore and varsity levels only.
In other states
Two other states have high-school athletic conferences named Mississippi Valley Conference. In Illinois, the Mississippi Valley Conference is a conference based in the Metro East area, the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. In Wisconsin, the Mississippi Valley Conference is a conference based in the La Crosse area, commonly known as the Coulee Region.
