i think one thing the OP is missing is "beggars can't be choosers" and 1000-1500 kid enrollments. my LAC was that small. a 25 man soccer team mixes half a dozen kids who could play in a higher division with some kids who barely played HS. there were usually a handful of people who could play but wanted to be a student or hippie. a handful more had quit the team because they signed up thinking they'd start and it didn't happen. we'd usually have like 27-30 out for tryouts and cut down 2-5 people.
TF and XC would be similarly diverse. the top handful would compete for conference or in a good year nationals. but the rest are what you can recruit or get to join the team from a 1000 kid campus at a good academic school, with zero scholarships. if they are D1-good, every state school in the state seemed to have track.
last, but related, you're talking about a very very very anonymous conference. this isn't williams and amherst and the rest of the nescac list. it's not chicago or NYU or that UAA bunch. it's not the claremont schools and occidental and caltech west coast. it's not even a conference punctuated by "MIT" or "grinnell" or "swarthmore." it's a bunch of mostly missouri schools no one has heard of, only 4 or so of which have enrollments over 1000.
yeah, if i had a conference where the school names are all anonymous in prestige, several schools were like 300 or 500 kids total, i'd be taking anyone who showed up for any sports team we had. principia i have seen in guidebooks for a decent quality student body but like if you aren't christian scientist they aren't interested. otherwise it's a bunch of "who?" that don't offer scholarships. the conference dropped football and one school has already closed.
based on my experience playing teams like scott gallagher from the area, i suspect the only thing they'd be any good at would be soccer, cherry picking kids from the st. louis area who don't make D1.