Olympian Conference

The Olympian Conference is a former high school athletic conference with its members concentrated in east central Wisconsin. Formed in 1970 and dissolved in 2015, all conference members belonged to the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The Olympian Conference was formed in 1970 by eight small- to medium-sized high schools in proximity to the Fox River Valley and Lake Winnebago in east central Wisconsin.^[1] Six of the original conference members previously competed in the Little Nine Conference (Brillion, Denmark, Freedom, Hilbert, Reedsville and Wrightstown), while one each came from the Eastern Wisconsin (Valders) and Peninsula (Mishicot) Conferences. The name of the conference was credited to a student at Mishicot High School^[2] after each school in the new conference suggested a name. Other finalists considered were the Inter-Lake Conference, Mid-Valley Conference and Packerland Conference (which would itself be used for a new conference that was inaugurated the same year as the Olympian). It was named so because the Olympics are considered the pinnacle of athletic competition.^[3] The Olympian Conference's first change in membership occurred in 1979, as Valders left to join a reconstituted Eastern Wisconsin Conference after a successful appeal against joining the Packerland Conference.^[4][5] Their stay in the newly-formed EWC was short-lived as they returned to the Olympian^[6] in 1980 to bring the circuit back to eight member schools. For football, Denmark and Mishicot swapped affiliations with Packerland members Gibraltar and Sevastopol,^[7] an arrangement that would last until the 1984 football season.^[8]

The Olympian Conference's membership roster was remarkably stable for the first three decades of its existence, but major changes came in 1999 during a wave of realignment in east central Wisconsin. Denmark and Freedom, the two largest schools in the conference, left to join the Packerland Conference and Valley Eight Conference, respectively.^[9] They were replaced by three schools: Chilton (previously of the Eastern Wisconsin Conference), Manitowoc Lutheran (formerly a member of the Fox Valley Christian Conference) and St. Mary Catholic in Neenah (from the Midwest Classic Conference).^[10] Both Manitowoc Lutheran and St. Mary Catholic were new to the WIAA having recently joined as part of the merger with the Wisconsin Independent Schools Athletic Association (WISAA). The Olympian Conference would continue in this alignment for eight years before Roncalli in Manitowoc joined from the Eastern Wisconsin Conference in 2007.^[11] That same year, the Olympian entered into a football partnership with the Packerland Conference, creating the new seventeen-member Olympian-Packerland Conference.^[12] The Olympian Conference would be dissolved in 2015 as its five of its smallest members (Hilbert, Manitowoc Lutheran, Mishicot, Reedsville and St. Mary Catholic) would leave to join nine former Central Lakeshore Conference schools in forming the new Big East Conference. The Eastern Wisconsin Conference took four former Olympian schools into the fold (Brillion, Chilton, Roncalli and Valders), and Wrightstown would join the North Eastern Conference.^[13]