Monmouth College Athletics

The Wartime Years

At this very time in history, the unprecedented conditions resulting from World War II disrupted every college campus and made necessary wide gaps in Midwest Conference sports schedules. Military actions during World War I had affected sports schedules between 1916 and 1918 but this period of national crisis was much more profound and widespread. Earlier differences were submerged, round-robin schedules were largely forgotten and conference championship tournaments were temporarily suspended. The main business of the nation was the personal and institutional support of the war effort.

Monmouth was no exception, losing a large majority of its male population to the military service in the early 1940's. Through the years of 1942-1946 several sports at Monmouth were canceled due to a shortage of participants. Due in large part to a temporary influx of servicemen in the U.S. Navy’s V-5 flight training programs the college was able to field athletic teams in basketball and track. However, the Navy outlawed its servicemen from football so no games were played in 1943 or 1944.

During the war, thousands of students from the nine Midwest colleges were in uniform, among them hundreds of athletes who played leading roles in all branches of the military service, including Monmouth’s Bobby Dunlap, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner for his actions in the battle for Iwo Jima. In memory of the men who lost their lives, the 1945 conference minutes mentioned a “Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference Honor Roll” containing names of 113 lettermen who were casualties in the war, including 9 graduates of Monmouth.

When the Midwest Conference resumed business in September of 1946, Carleton was again a member. The conference was nine schools strong and committed itself to providing a standard format for championship status. Immediately after the war, only five football games were required for the league title due to the necessary time needed for all schools to recover from the wartime conditions. After 1948, no MCAC college played fewer than six conference games and a variety of formats, including complete eight- and ten-game schedules, have been played since then to determine the annual league champion. Basketball has also utilized a variety of championship formats, including round-robin schedules and divisional standings, to crown a conference champion.

For record purposes, it has been generally accepted that most team and individual records at Monmouth are recognized from the postwar “modern era” years of competition, beginning in 1946. At that time the college fielded eight active teams and would soon reinstate wrestling as a varsity sport.