As fall sports seasons start up on college campuses, two ACM tournaments will provide early season tests for consortial colleges in soccer and volleyball. A highlight of the tourneys will be cross-conference matches that serve up competition among ACM teams that rarely play each other.
“The Soccer Showcase and the Volleyball Invitational Tournament are the result of the ACM athletic directors’ vision that ACM colleges share core educational values in both academics and athletics,” said ACM President Christopher Welna. “I’ve seen firsthand how much the student-athletes enjoy the competition as well as the camaraderie, especially when they get the chance to play ACM colleges that are in different athletic conferences.”
The 2014 ACM Soccer Showcase, hosted on September 5-7 by the three member colleges in Minnesota, will feature five ACM college men’s teams and six women’s teams representing Carleton, Coe, Grinnell, Knox, Lake Forest, Macalester, and St. Olaf Colleges.
Two days of matches will bracket an excursion on Saturday, September 6, when the student-athletes will tour the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis. The museum was built within the ruins of the Washburn A Mill – the world’s largest and most modern flour mill in its prime – and uses exhibits, tours, and multimedia to tell stories about the history and importance of the flour industry in the Twin Cities.
The following weekend, on September 13-14, teams from Carleton, Coe, Grinnell, Knox, Lake Forest, and Macalester Colleges will converge on Grinnell’s campus for the 2014 ACM Volleyball Invitational Tournament. The teams will each play four matches, and players and coaches will gather together for a Saturday evening tournament banquet.
The tournaments have grown out of an initiative by the ACM athletic directors that harks back to the consortium’s founding in 1959, when the ten colleges comprising the Midwest Conference formed the ACM, thereby bringing academic collaboration together with athletic competition.
This will be the second ACM volleyball tournament, coming a year after Luther College hosted the inaugural competition, and the ACM athletic directors plan to make it an annual event. Current plans are to hold a soccer tournament every two years, and competitions in other sports may be considered, as well.
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