Braveland Conference

The Braveland Conference is a former high school athletic conference in Wisconsin, formed in 1953 and ending competition in 1993. Its membership was concentrated in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and members were affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The Braveland Conference was formed in 1953 by four high schools in the outer suburbs of Milwaukee: Cedarburg, Menomonee Falls, Port Washington and Watertown.^[1] Cedarburg and Menomonee Falls had previously been members of the 4-C Conference, and Port Washington and Watertown competed independent of conference affiliation.^[2] It was formed after several failed attempts by the four original members to join the Little Ten Conference, dating back to the late 1940s.^[3][4][5] The Braveland Conference was named after the National League's Milwaukee Braves, who had just relocated from Boston a few months earlier.^[6]

Due to the rapid growth around the Milwaukee area occurring after World War II, new school districts began to pop up in and around Milwaukee County. In 1955, Salem Central joined the conference,^[7] followed by Brookfield and Nicolet in 1956.^[8] Salem Central left in 1958 to join the Southeastern Wisconsin Conference and cut down on the long travel distances from Kenosha County they had been experiencing as Braveland members.^[9] They were replaced by the new high schools in Granville and Muskego that same year.^[10] Oak Creek joined the conference in 1959,^[11] just as Watertown left to rejoin the Little Ten Conference.^[12] In 1961, the conference added six schools: Brookfield East,^[13] Greendale (formerly of the Suburban Conference), Greenfield, Homestead, New Berlin and Whitnall. Brookfield East and New Berlin joined as junior varsity members before attaining full membership in 1962. To accommodate this growth, the conference split into two divisions.^[14]

In 1962, Brookfield East and New Berlin joined as full members, and they were placed in the Southern Braveland. The newly renamed Brookfield Central shifted to the Northern Braveland to accommodate the expansion. Hamilton High School in Sussex joined that same year as a junior varsity member.^[15]

The influx of new high schools in the Milwaukee area led both the Braveland and Suburban Conferences to begin discussing realignment options in the early 1960s.^[16] With three more high schools set to join as full members in 1963 (Franklin, St. Francis and Sussex Hamilton), conference leadership decided that a seventeen-member conference was too unwieldy to continue.^[17] The eight members in the southern suburbs left to form what later became the Parkland Conference:^[18] Franklin, Greendale, Greenfield, Muskego, New Berlin, Oak Creek, St. Francis and Whitnall.^[19] Their departure solidified the Braveland as a conference for the Milwaukee area's northern second-ring suburban schools. In 1966, Granville High School changed its name to Brown Deer High School,^[20][21] due in part to annexation of the formerly unincorporated town of Granville into the city of Milwaukee a few years earlier.^[22][23] Conference membership increased to ten in 1969 with the split of Menomonee Falls High School into Menomonee Falls East and Menomonee Falls North.^[24]

After years of discussion on high school conference realignment in southeastern Wisconsin, the WIAA presented a sweeping realignment plan for the 1980-81 school year. Two conferences were dissolved (the Scenic Moraine and South Shore)^[25] and four of the thirteen displaced schools joined the Braveland, bringing membership to fourteen. Arrowhead, Germantown and Grafton joined from the Scenic Moraine and Kenosha Bradford from the South Shore.^[26][27] The Braveland Conference competed as a single division for most sports with the exception of football, which subdivided into two groups that were originally referred to Division A and Division B:^[28]

For the 1982 football season, Kenosha Bradford and Germantown swapped divisions, and Divisions A and B were renamed the West and East Divisions, respectively.^[29] In 1983, Kenosha Bradford left the Braveland Conference to join the Milwaukee Area Conference,^[30] and the next year, the two Menomonee Falls high schools merged to form a new Menomonee Falls High School^[31][32] on East's campus. The new school inherited their predecessors' membership in the Braveland Conference.

In 1985, another round of conference realignment had occurred in southeastern Wisconsin, and seven schools left the Braveland Conference. Brown Deer joined the Parkland Conference, and six schools (Cedarburg, Germantown, Grafton, Homestead, Nicolet and Port Washington) left to form the North Shore Conference (along with former Suburban Conference members Shorewood, Wauwatosa East, Wauwatosa West and Whitefish Bay). Replacing the seven schools exiting the conference were Mukwonago from the Parkland Conference and Waukesha North and Waukesha South from the Suburban Conference.^[33] For the final eight years of the conference's existence, all of its member schools were located in Waukesha County.

The Braveland Conference was realigned out of existence by the WIAA after the 1992-93 school year. Its four largest members (Arrowhead, Mukwonago, Waukesha North and Waukesha South)^[34] joined the new fifteen-member Southeast Conference. The four smaller schools were dispersed to three different conferences: Brookfield Central and Brookfield East went to the new Woodland Conference, and Menomonee Falls and Sussex Hamilton went to the North Shore and Parkland Conferences, respectively.^[35] Waukesha West High School was slated to become a member of the Braveland when they opened in 1993,^[36] but the conference had been disbanded by that time and they joined the Southeast Conference.

 Junior Varsity only  Northern Braveland  Southern Braveland