[3] Rose Polytechnic (today Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) joined the conference three months later, giving it eight members when competition began in fall 1947.
Championship events were also held in cross country, tennis, and golf, but those sports were not mandatory.
Hanover advanced to the national tournament in 1967-68 and 1969-70, led by guard Steve Wilson, who went on to play professionally for the ABA's Denver Rockets.
Halfback Dick Nyers, the only HCC athlete ever to play in the NFL, led the Greyhounds to an undefeated (8-0) season in 1953 and three consecutive conference titles (1953, 1954, 1955) before going on to a brief career with the Baltimore Colts.
In baseball, Anderson dominated the HCC in the 1960s under the leadership of former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine, who coached the Ravens to four conference titles in twelve years.
[16] The HCC eventually added wrestling as an 8th conference sport, with league competition starting in the 1964-65 season.
[17][18] The transformation of the HCC into the HBCC came after Franklin and Indiana Central quit the league at the end of the 1969-70 academic year.
Like the HCC in its final seasons, the HBCC competed in the NAIA Division II for football, which eventually expanded its postseason bracket from four teams to eight.
Anderson qualified for the 1984 NAIA World Series, the only baseball program to do so in the 15 seasons of HBCC play.
[20] At that point the five remaining members--Hanover and the four Ohio schools--accepted the reality that the conference would cease to exist the following summer.
Ten of the 13 former HCC/HBCC members--all except Indianapolis (formerly Indiana Central) and Findlay, both of which moved to NCAA Division II, and the defunct Canterbury--were eventually reunited after 1987 as members of NCAA Division III in the Indiana Collegiate Athletic Conference (ICAC), later rebranded as the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC).
Like the HCC/HBCC, the conference was founded as an Indiana-only league and changed its name after expanding to include schools from Ohio.