Last week, Loyola-Chicago and Lewis played in one of the more memorable and arguably one of the best title matches in NCAA Men’s Volleyball history. Loyola ended up defending its title from last year by defeating the Flyers 3-2 (21-25, 25-23, 25-15, 27-25, 23-21) on the campus of Stanford University.

But it wasn’t the outcome of the game that ended up being most important.

The match featured a first-ever title game between two Midwest teams. In a sport long dominated by schools in California and Penn State, having two MIVA (Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) programs in the title match proved that schools in the Midwest are also ones that can “play with the big boys.”

The MIVA was actually the first men’s volleyball conference, founded in 1961 with Ball State University, Detroit Institute of Technology, Earlham College, George Williams College, Lansing College, Michigan State University, Ohio State University and Wittenberg College being the ones to start the league. In its history the conference has seen 40 teams participate at one time or another, with only Ball State and Ohio State being leftovers from that first year.  Schools like Michigan, Kentucky, Louisville, Indiana, Wisconsin, Purdue and Notre Dame have all participated in the league.

Men’s Volleyball had its first-ever sanctioned NCAA title match in 1970, when UCLA defeated Long Beach State for the title. In 1977, Ohio State played for and lost in the title match. It would be the last championship match appearance by a Midwest team until 2000, when OSU again lost in the title match. The conference won its first NCAA title in 2003, when Lewis won the title, but they had it taken away due to the use of ineligible players. In 2011, Ohio State won the first NCAA title by a Midwest team by defeating UCSB in five sets.

But that would only be the start of a successful run by Midwest schools. In 2014, Loyola-Chicago won the school’s first title in any sport since the Men’s Basketball team won the 1962-63 NCAA Basketball title.

Then came 2015.

Loyola started the season at No. 2 and Lewis at No. 9. Thanks to their in-season results, the two made history in January 20th’s AVCA poll by becoming the first two Midwest occupy the top two sports in the poll. Lewis would take the first two meetings between the teams, each by a 3-1 score. Loyola won the MIVA’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament by defeating Lewis 3-1. Lewis would earn an at-large berth, defeating Penn State to get to the title match, while Loyola defeated both Pfeiffer and UC Irvine in straight sets before the dramatic win over Lewis.

The title match went the full five sets, with the final two going “overtime,” including a final set that had a total of five match points staved off before Loyola’s Ricky Gevis and Nicholas Olson combined for the championship-clinching block.

With the win, Loyola became only the fourth school to win back-to-back men’s titles, with the others being UCLA, Pepperdine and UC Irvine.

What makes the match better is that both schools are comprised of mainly Midwest players and Lewis’ roster being mostly Illinois players.

What does that mean?

That means that the thousands of high school boys that play boys volleyball have options to play and that the best talent in the country isn’t only on the West Coast, mainly in California and Hawaii.

With Men’s Volleyball only having 4.5 scholarships available, many players who might be good enough to play Division I/II have now begun to play Division III, where there are 77 Men’s Volleyball teams, compared to 28 Division I teams and 18 Division II teams. To go along with that, 186 teams played in or were registered to play in the NCVF National Tournament, the nation’s governing body for collegiate club volleyball. Schools like Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Notre Dame and Illinois have dominated club volleyball for years. What club volleyball does is allow those who want to play volleyball in college, but not have to deal with the rigors of being an NCAA athlete.

All that is well, but one thing stands true.

For the next year, the MIVA reigns supreme in the NCAA sport of Men’s Volleyball, telling the world ‘Hey the Midwest can play too.’