Lake County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. In 2020, its population was 498,700, making it Indiana's second-most populous county. The county seat is Crown Point. The county is part of Northwest Indiana and the Chicago metropolitan area, and contains a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. It is bordered on the north by Lake Michigan and contains a portion of the Indiana Dunes. It includes Marktown, Clayton Mark's planned worker community in East Chicago.
Hammond is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. Located along Lake Michigan, it is part of the Chicago metropolitan area and the only city in Indiana to border Chicago. As of the 2020 census, it is the eighth-most populous city in Indiana, with 77,879 residents. It was first settled in the mid-19th century and it is one of the oldest cities of northern Lake County.
Munster is a suburban town in North Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. It is in the Chicago metropolitan area, approximately 30 miles (48 km) southeast of the Chicago Loop, and shares municipal boundaries with Hammond to the north, Highland to the east, Dyer and Schererville to the south, and Lansing and Lynwood directly west of the Illinois border. Its population was 23,894 at the 2020 US Census.
NAIA independent schools are four-year institutional members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) that do not have formal conference affiliations. NAIA schools that are not members of any other athletic conference are members of the Continental Athletic Conference (CAC), formerly the Association of Independent Institutions (AII), which provides member services to the institution and allows members to compete in postseason competition. The CAC has one member institution in Canada's British Columbia. It provides services to the member institutions that are not fitting in any other NAIA conference and allows members to compete in postseason competition. The AII renamed itself the Continental Athletic Conference at the end of June 2021, citing the need to identify as a proper conference.
The Porter County Conference (PCC) is an athletic conference made up of eight Indiana high schools. Five of the eight schools are within Porter County, Indiana. The three remaining are in LaPorte County.
Northwest Indiana, nicknamed The Region after the Calumet Region, is an unofficial region of northern Indiana, United States that is located at the northwestern corner of the state. Though there is no official definition of the region, it is based on the Gary, Indiana Metropolitan Division, which comprises Jasper, Lake, Porter and Newton counties in Indiana, and the Michigan City-La Porte, IN Metropolitan Statistic Area, which comprises LaPorte, with unofficial definitions also including Starke and Pulaski counties. This region neighbors Lake Michigan and parts of it are in the Chicago metropolitan area. According to the 2020 Census, the largest definition of Northwest Indiana has a population of 866,965 and is the state's second largest urban area after the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area. It is also the home of the Indiana Dunes, parts of which have been preserved through conservation efforts. The town of Ogden Dunes houses the Hour Glass, a museum showcasing the ecological and conservation efforts of O. D. Frank.
The North Suburban Conference (NSC) is an extra-curricular conference of eight high schools located in Lake County, Illinois, in the northern suburbs of Chicago. All of the schools are members of the Illinois High School Association (IHSA).
Lake Central High School (LCHS) is a high school in St. John, Indiana, for students in grades nine through twelve. Its students come from St. John Township which includes the towns of St. John and Dyer, almost the entire town of Schererville, unincorporated areas with Crown Point postal addresses, and the southeastern section of Griffith that is within St. John Township. It is the only high school in the Lake Central School Corporation.
The Northern Indiana Conference (NIC) is a high school athletic conference that was founded in 1927 and spanned from as far west as Hammond and Gary to South Bend/Mishawaka and Elkhart to the east and south to Plymouth. Since its start in 1927, a total of 32 separate schools have at one time called the NIC home. From its inception until 1963, the conference had been divided into East and West divisions. The West Division left to form the Northwestern Conference in 1963. With membership dwindling to 7 members by the 1970s, the conference added former members of the Northern Indiana Valley Conference to its ranks. Currently, every former NIVC member is now a part of the NIC except for South Bend Jackson, which closed in 1973, and South Bend LaSalle, which joined the NIC in 1977, but closed in 2001.
The Duneland Athletic Conference (DAC) is a high school athletic conference in Indiana serving eight members of the Indiana High School Athletic Association. Member schools are located in the counties of Lake, LaPorte, and Porter along Indiana's Lake Michigan shore. Each school is classified based on enrollment as 6A or 5A for football and 4A for basketball, the classes for the largest schools in Indiana. The Duneland Conference is also known for its gymnastics programs which have won a combined total of 35 state championship and state runner-up titles.
The Lake Athletic Conference (LAC) was a high school athletic conference serving members of the Indiana High School Athletic Association. The LAC existed in multiple guises from the fall of 1969 through the spring of 2007, at which time it comprised sixteen member high schools. The conference took its name from all its early members being located in Lake County, Indiana, in addition to the predecessing Lake 10 Conference, of which many schools were members before expansion increased the number of schools in the conference.
The Northern Lakes Conference of Indiana (NLC) is an IHSAA-sanctioned athletic conference of high schools located within Elkhart, Kosciusko, Marshall and St. Joseph counties in northern Indiana, United States.
The Greater South Shore Conference is an eight-member Indiana High School Athletic Association athletic conference spanning Lake and Porter counties in Northwest Indiana. Two other members, Boone Grove and Gary West Side, participate only in football, with Boone Grove otherwise participating in the Porter County Conference and Gary West Side otherwise participating in the Great Lakes Athletic Conference.
The Mid-Southern Conference is a ten-member IHSAA-Sanctioned Athletic Conference within the South Central Indiana counties of Clark, Harrison, Jackson, Scott, and Washington.
The North Central Conference is an IHSAA-sanctioned athletic conference consisting of ten large high schools in Cass, Delaware, Grant, Howard, Madison, Marion, Tippecanoe, and Wayne Counties across Central and North Central Indiana. Most of these schools are in 35,000+ population towns like Anderson, Marion, Kokomo, Lafayette, Muncie, and Richmond. Several of the nation's largest gymnasiums belong to members of this conference.
The Northwestern Conference was an IHSAA-sanctioned athletic conference involving schools from Gary, Indiana.
The White River Conference was an IHSAA-sanctioned conference located within rural areas of East Central Indiana, that existed twice, once from 1954 to 1977, and from 1989 to 2010. The first version of the conference was founded as a home for high schools in Madison County who weren't in the Central Indiana Athletic Conference. The conference would expand quickly from six to nine schools, as two new high schools in Anderson and Middletown, a school in Henry County, were added within two years. Membership was generally not stable until 1969, as Madison Heights left, Highland was forced out and eventually added back into the conference, St. Mary's closed, member schools consolidated, and schools from neighboring Delaware and Hancock counties were added. Eventually, large disparities in enrollment causing the conference to disband, as city and consolidated schools outgrew their rural counterparts.. Schools would move into the Big Blue River Conference, Classic Athletic Conference, and Mid-Eastern Conference.
The Lake-Porter County Conference was an IHSAA-sanctioned conference in Northwest Indiana. The conference formed by 1929 at latest, consisting of smaller schools in Lake and Porter counties. The much smaller rural Porter County schools split off in 1933, though Portage and Wheeler would compete in both the LPCC and Porter County Conference. The conference ended in 1949, as almost every school would form the Calumet Athletic Conference.
The Northwest Suburban Conference (NWSC) was a high school athletic conference in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, primarily centered around western Lake County and northwestern Cook County. All of the schools were members of the Illinois High School Association (IHSA).