The Mountain East Conference was born in 2012 after a group of schools across West Virginia, Virginia and Ohio were ready to compete at a national level. It didn't take long for the MEC to get the hang of that.
The conference celebrated one national championship, three national runner-up finishes, a national semifinal finish and a berth in the Women's College World Series, all in the 2015-16 campaign. The MEC already had made waves nationally in its first two seasons. The Notre Dame wrestling team won a national title in 2014, the same calendar year West Liberty was national runner-up in men's basketball and Charleston was national runner-up in men's soccer.
The Mountain East's 2015-16 awards haul was one that made conference commissioner Reid Amos a very happy person.
"It has been tremendously exciting to see our institutions have such a high level of unprecedented success in our first three years as an NCAA conference," Amos said. "We believe that this year was not the culmination for the league, but rather establishing a new standard for success for our institutions."
The MEC scored a national title with Wheeling Jesuit's volleyball team, and watched the Shepherd football team and West Liberty men's basketball team reach their respective NCAA championship games. Notre Dame finished second in the Division II wrestling tournament as the Falcons' Joey Davis became the first Division II wrestler to win four national titles and go undefeated in the process.
UC's men's soccer team returned to the national semifinals this past season, and the softball team broke through with a WCWS berth, the first for an MEC program.
What Amos enjoys is that national success in the MEC isn't limited to one or two programs, but that wealth was spread throughout the conference. The Mountain East had multiple teams ranked in national Top 25 lists this past season in football, men's soccer, men's basketball and softball. The MEC had three teams enter its men's basketball tournament ranked in the national top 5 - West Liberty at No. 1, Wheeling Jesuit at No. 4 and Fairmont State at No. 5.
Amos said that quality depth has allowed Mountain East teams to succeed nationally, because they're already well seasoned against good competition within the conference.
"The formation of a highly competitive conference has created a platform that is well-preparing our top teams for NCAA competition, which is providing a great experience for our student-athletes in MEC competition and they certainly aren't surprised when they come up against the best Division II programs in the country."
With the 2015-16 season nearly at a close - the MEC has four individual entrants in the NCAA women's track and field championships - the conference will handle some housekeeping matters over the summer. The conference's athletic administrators and its board of directors, made up of the member universities' presidents, will meet in June.
Among the topics will be future MEC tournament sites. That may or may not include moving the MEC basketball tournaments from the Charleston Civic Center. The 2016 tournament was the second in a three-year agreement, but a clause in that agreement - ticket revenue from the event falling below $60,000 - gives the MEC the option to exit that contract early. Ticket revenue for March's tournament reached $52,511.
"Our first few years felt as much like a business startup as it felt like running an athletic conference," Amos said. "We dealt heavily with items such as establishing league policies and business processes. Now, we can begin to become more finite in our focus.
"When our administrators meet, we are fortunate to have a lot of talented people in our meeting rooms," he added, "and with the high level of cooperative effort we have experienced in the MEC our meetings are a great place to share ideas and collaborate"