The Midland Empire Conference (also called MEC) is a

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

athletic conference An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other in a sports league. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conf ...

whose members are located in northwest

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

. The conference participates in the MSHSAA. The conference was created during a March 1962 meeting at Armstrong's Restaurant in

Maryville, Missouri Maryville is a city and county seat of Nodaway County, Missouri, United States. Located in the "Missouri Point" region, As of the 2020 census, the city population was 10,633. Maryville is home to Northwest Missouri State University and Northwes ...

and took effect in the 1962-63 school year. The original five schools were four schools from

St. Joseph, Missouri St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includ ...

(Benton, Christian Brothers (which would fold into LeBlond), and Lafayette) and two other schools from northwest Missouri (Maryville and Savannah). The arrangement created a league of schools of comparable size (the St. Joseph schools earlier competed in the Pony Express Conference which included the much larger St. Joseph Central High School as well as larger suburban Kansas City schools while Savannah and Maryville since 1937 competed in the Northwest Missouri Conference with much smaller schools. Discussions of creating a conference of larger comparable sized schools in northwest Missouri had been discussed since at least 1925 but never quite materialized. In 2018, Smithville left the conference for the Suburban Kansas City Conference and was replaced by St. Pius X in Kansas City.

Member schools

Former members

* Smithville High School (1998-2018) * Platte County High School (1998-2007)

References

{{Missouri High School Athletic Conferences High school sports conferences and leagues in the United States Missouri high school athletic conferences