LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A chapter in the history of Little Rock's athletics department will come to a close Thursday when the Trojans' membership in the Sun Belt Conference will reach its 31-year conclusion.
Little Rock announced last December that the school would
move to the Ohio Valley Conference on July 1, 2022.
First joining the league in the 1991-92 academic calendar year Little Rock has found repeated success across the board in the Sun Belt Conference, winning 50 conference championships (division, regular season or tournament) and some of the best student-athletes ever to compete in the Sun Belt Conference did so while wearing the Maroon and Silver.
Click here to see more on Little Rock's championship teams, individuals and other top moments in its athletic history.
Chastity Reed (women's basketball) remains the highest-ever draft pick in the WNBA Draft of any Sun Belt product and is one of several Sun Belt Players of the year to come from Little Rock. Derek Fisher was one of the league's most prolific players before becoming a first round NBA Draft pick.
On the hardwood, the Trojans (men and women) combined to win more regular season (15), conference tournament (7) and combined (22) Sun Belt Championships than any other current or former member of the league since Little Rock's inaugural season in 1991-92.
Little Rock remains the last Sun Belt Conference member (or former member) to record a win in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament when the Trojans upended No. 5-seed Purdue in overtime, 85-83, in the 2016 NCAA Tournament.
Joe Foley's Trojans on the women's side have been just as successful with two NCAA Tournament First Round wins and Foley remains the league's all-time winningest basketball coach.
Van Compton's volleyball program set the standard for what championship-caliber volleyball should be in the conference. She has led the Trojans to 10 Sun Belt titles (division, regular season or tournament) in her tenure with five NCAA Tournament bids, including advancing to the second round in 2015.
Little Rock Track and Field and Cross Country, winners of 10 conference championships, brought the league one of its few individual national championships in 1997 when Dawn Williams-Sewer became the top collegian in the indoor 800m as she ran 2:02.55 to win the national title. Williams-Sewer, who would go on to compete in the Olympics, represents one of the 11 individual national champions that have competed for the Trojans.
The Trojans' success in the Sun Belt was far from limited to the court or field of competition. Little Rock's Team routinely was the standard bearer for the league in both academic success and community involvement. Since 2001, Little Rock has had 12 Academic All-America honors bestowed upon its student-athletes and its sports teams are consistently out in the community volunteering their time to benefit the capital city.
Since its induction into the league in 1991, the league's makeup has consistently changed with schools coming and going but in the past 31 years, the one constant has been Little Rock providing some of the toughest competition any other Sun Belt member could encounter. The wins for the Trojans piled up at Barton Coliseum and then at the Alltel Center before the opening of the Jack Stephens Center in 2005, providing Little Rock the premier basketball arena the league had to offer.
Times have changed and so has conference affiliations for schools across the country. The league that has hosted the Trojans for 31 years is now flung even farther across the country, yielding longer travel times, higher expenses and fewer regional rivalries, all while shifting the league's focus towards Group of 5 Football.
The conference change won't be the first for Little Rock.
As Little Rock departs the Sun Belt Conference, it does so with great fanfare and excitement for its entrance into the Ohio Valley Conference, a much more geographically conscious and regionally aligned league that will foster more regional rivalries and a more positive student-athlete experience with shorter travel times to conference opponents.
As the Trojans join the Ohio Valley Conference beginning at midnight on Friday, July 1, 2022, the Trojans will soon be launching renewals and new sales for basketball season tickets. Stay tuned to LRTrojans.com over the next few days for more information.
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