Coulee Conference

The Coulee Conference is a high school athletic conference of medium-sized schools based in west central Wisconsin. Founded in 1926, it is one of Wisconsin's oldest athletic conferences and its member schools are affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The Coulee Conference was formed in 1926 by six small high schools in west central Wisconsin: Bangor, Galesville, Holmen, Mindoro, Onalaska and West Salem.^[1] The original member schools were located in La Crosse and Trempealeau Counties, and the conference was named after the Coulee Region in the southwestern part of Wisconsin's Driftless Area. Membership increased to seven schools in 1936 when Trempealeau joined the Coulee Conference^[2] and eight in 1942 when Melrose became members.^[3] After Galesville's merger with Ettrick in 1949,^[4] the Coulee Conference's roster remained consistent for sixteen years until Melrose and Mindoro merged in 1965,^[5] with the new school (Melrose-Mindoro) taking on the membership of its two predecessors.^[6] Arcadia moved over from the original Mississippi Valley Conference to keep membership at eight schools.^[7] In 1971, Gale-Ettrick merged with Trempealeau to create the new Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau High School,^[8] with the new school remaining in the Coulee Conference. As in the previous consolidation of conference members, the ledger was kept at eight schools by adding Cochrane-Fountain City from the Dairyland Conference.^[9]

In 1977, the Coulee Conference lost three members to conference realignment in the region: two to the Dairyland Conference: (Cochrane-Fountain City and Melrose-Mindoro)^[10] and one to the Scenic Central Conference (Bangor)^[11] Replacing the three exiting schools were Black River Falls from the South Central Conference^[12] and two schools from the Scenic Central Conference (Royall and Westby).^[11] Royall was strongly opposed to being placed in the Coulee Conference for a multitude of reasons including small size compared to other Coulee schools, increased travel distances, and loss of traditional Scenic Central rivalries.^[13] After the WIAA's two-year freeze on conference realignment expired in 1979, Royall joined with their former Scenic Central brethren to form the new Scenic Bluffs Conference.^[14] The next year, the Coulee Conference accepted its first (and to date, only) out-of-state member, adding La Crescent from Minnesota (located across the Mississippi River from La Crosse) as Royall's replacement.^[15]

Membership in the Coulee Conference remained consistent for most of the 1980s, with Viroqua moving over from the Southwest Wisconsin Athletic League as the conference's ninth member in 1987.^[16] This would turn out to be the high water mark for the conference, as Holmen and Onalaska were growing in enrollment beyond the size their conference rivals and wanted to explore other options.^[17] Both schools left to become charter members of the new Mississippi Valley Conference in 1989 with former members of the Big Rivers (La Crosse Central and La Crosse Logan) and South Central (Sparta and Tomah) Conferences.^[18] In 1996, Luther High School in Onalaska was invited to join the Coulee Conference after being expelled from their former home in the Dairyland Conference.^[19] They began conference play the next year,^[20] and the Coulee Conference's roster remained consistent for the next decade. In 2007, La Crescent-Hokah returned to a Minnesota-based conference as they left to become members of the Hiawatha Valley League,^[21] bringing the Coulee Conference to its current alignment of seven schools. In 2020, Aquinas High School joined the Coulee Conference for football only.

The Coulee Conference sponsored football for the first time with the 1959 season, and six conference members comprised the initial roster: Bangor, Gale-Ettrick, Holmen, Onalaska, Trempealeau and West Salem.^[22] By the 1964 season, all eight Coulee Conference members were football participants, and aside from a few schools that briefly left the conference, membership for football mirrored membership for all other sports. For the 2019 season, the Coulee Conference was dissolved as a football entity, with schools dispersed to the South Central Conference (Black River Falls and Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau),^[23] Southwest Wisconsin Activities League (Luther)^[24] and Southwest Wisconsin Conference (Arcadia, Viroqua and Westby).^[25] Around this time, the WIAA and Wisconsin Football Coaches Association collaborated on a massive realignment of Wisconsin's high school football conferences to be reviewed on a two-year competition cycle.^[26] The initial 2020-2021 alignment revived the Coulee Conference for football, with five full members (Arcadia, Black River Falls, Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau, Viroqua and Westby) joining associate members Altoona (Cloverbelt) and Aquinas (Mississippi Valley) to round out the seven-member group.^[27] For the 2022-2023 cycle, the Coulee Conference was expanded to eight football-playing members with the return of West Salem from the Mississippi Valley Conference.^[28] Luther rejoined the Coulee Conference for the 2024-2025 realignment, replacing Altoona after their shift to the Middle Border Conference. This alignment will remain in place through at least the 2026-2027 competition cycle.^[29]

The Coulee Conference sponsors 20 varsity sports:

• Fall - Football, boys' soccer, girls' tennis, volleyball, boys' cross country, girls' cross country and girls' golf
• Winter - Boys' basketball, girls' basketball, gymnastics, wrestling boys' hockey and girls' hockey.
• Spring - Boys' track, girls' track, boys' golf, boys' tennis, girls' soccer, baseball and softball.

Beginning in 2019, the Westby Norsemen and the Viroqua Blackhawks have played for the Vernon County Mega Bowl in their yearly football contest. The Norsemen won the first Mega Bowl game 21-8 in 2019. There was no Mega Bowl Game in 2020.^[30]

• Coulee Conference (official website)