VMI Keydets

The VMI Keydets are the athletic teams that represent the Virginia Military Institute. All sports participate in the NCAA's Division I, and all but four compete in the Southern Conference (the exceptions being men's and women's swimming and diving in the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association, water polo in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and rifle in the Mid-Atlantic Rifle Conference). VMI fields teams in sixteen different sports, ten for men and six for women.

Notably, VMI is one of only two Division I schools that do not sponsor women's basketball. The other is fellow Southern Conference member and senior military college The Citadel.

Teams

A member of the Southern Conference, VMI sponsors teams in eleven men's and seven women's NCAA sanctioned sports:

The women's cross country team was the first women's team at VMI, as it was formed in 1997. The newest women's sport for the Institution, water polo was announced in 2009.

Conference affiliations

The Keydets played every sport independently until 1918, when they joined the short-lived South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1918 for all sports. With the demise of the conference in 1921, VMI stayed an independent until joining the Southern Conference (SoCon) in 1924, and a massive one at the time.