Founded in 1858, Baker University has a long-standing academic tradition. Baker also has a venerable athletic tradition.
According to haac.com, Baker University is one of the four schools that have been members of the Heart of America Athletic Conference since its inception in 1971. Graceland University, Missouri Valley College and William Jewell College are the other three.
Athletic Director Dan Harris said Baker is very proud to be one of the founding members of the conference.
“The HAAC has been very good to us over the years,” Harris said. “And, I feel like we have been very good for the HAAC.”
The 2007-2008 season marks the HAAC’s 37th year. All 11 conference schools are members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.
The NAIA was founded in large part because of the idea of a member of the Baker community.
Every basketball fan in this part of the country knows the significance of James Naismith, but Emil Liston’s contributions remain relatively unknown.
Most people within the Baker family know that Liston is the namesake of Baker University’s football field, but many are unaware that he helped create the NAIA.
It is ironic that such a lasting, vibrant gift to collegiate sports began with a mundane note in the first recorded history of the association:
“The first general session of the `Organizing Convention’ of the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball was held in the Phillips Hotel, Kansas City, Mo., at 10 a.m., Sunday, March 10, 1940.”
According to naia.org, from this meeting, a collegiate basketball tournament was created. The tournament was the creation of Liston, Naismith, Frank Cramer and a group of Kansas City business leaders who wanted to give the area fans exciting competition.
The NAIB took the nation by storm in 1948 when it became the first national organization to offer intercollegiate postseason opportunities to black student athletes. Then, the organization took it a step further in 1953 when historically black schools were allowed membership.
Just a year before the historic inclusion, the NAIB made another expansion. The NAIB was transformed in the NAIA, and the first all-encompassing set of rules and standards were adopted.
The name was not the only thing that changed for the organization. According to naia.org, additional national championships were added in golf, tennis and outdoor track and field. Football, cross country, baseball and swimming and diving were added to the championships calendar in 1956. Wrestling, 1958; soccer, 1959; bowling, 1962-78; gymnastics, 1964-84; indoor track and field, 1966; and men’s volleyball, 1969-80, were later additions.
In 1957, the NAIA moved its headquarters from the George Pepperdine College campus in Los Angeles to Kansas City to better serve the membership from a centralized location.
The NAIA made a groundbreaking move Aug. 1, 1980, when it revolutionized national collegiate athletics with the establishment of athletics programs for women.
The association moved its headquarters in 1992 to Tulsa, Okla., before finally relocating to Olathe in July of 2001, just miles from Gardner where the idea for the small-college basketball tournament gave rise to the NAIA.
