Suburban Conference (Wisconsin)

The Suburban Conference is a former high school athletic conference in Wisconsin, operating from 1925 to 1985 with its membership concentrated in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Its member schools were aligned with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The Suburban Conference, originally known as the Milwaukee Suburban Interscholastic Athletic Association, was formed in 1925 by seven high schools located in the streetcar suburbs of Milwaukee: Cudahy, Milwaukee County Agricultural, Shorewood, South Milwaukee, Waukesha, Wauwatosa and West Allis.^[1] It was the second athletic conference to form in the Milwaukee area, preceded only by the Milwaukee City Conference in 1893.^[2] Milwaukee County School of Agriculture left the conference when it closed in 1928,^[3] and its place was taken by the newly opened high school in West Milwaukee in 1929.^[4] Whitefish Bay joined the conference in 1933,^[5][6] and their entry into the Suburban Conference brought the membership group to the maximum number of eight schools per the conference's original constitution.^[1]

The growth of the Suburban Conference coincided with population growth in the Milwaukee area. West Allis added a second high school in 1939 when Nathan Hale High School added senior high school grades,^[7] and they joined the conference in 1942.^[8][9] West Allis High School changed their name to West Allis Central in the process. Nathan Hale's entry brought the number of member schools in the conference to nine, breaking the 1925 constitutional limit on the number of members.^[1] An odd number of schools also created scheduling issues that led the conference to explore adding a tenth member in the early 1950s.^[10] After making unsuccessful overtures to Oconomowoc High School to leave the Little Ten Conference, the Suburban Conference extended an invite to the recently opened Greendale High School, and they joined in 1952.^[11] Port Washington and Watertown were also reported as candidates for expansion but instead formed half of the new Braveland Conference (along with Cedarburg and Menomonee Falls of the disbanded 4-C Conference) in 1953.^[12][13] Wauwatosa West High School joined the conference soon after it opened in 1961, with Wauwatosa High School becoming Wauwatosa East.^[14] They replaced Greendale, who left to join the Braveland Conference^[15] for two years before becoming a charter member of the Parkland Conference.^[16] A conference realignment plan that merged the Suburban and Braveland Conferences was also discussed that year but never implemented.^[17] 1974 brought an eleventh member to the conference in the form of the newly opened^[18][19] Waukesha North High School,^[20] and Waukesha High School changed its name to Waukesha South.

After years of discussion between the high school athletic conferences in southeastern Wisconsin, the WIAA stepped in with a sweeping realignment plan in 1980. Five new schools joined the Suburban: four of the smaller schools from the Milwaukee City Conference (Juneau, Riverside, Rufus King^[21] and West Division) and Racine Horlick from the former South Shore Conference.^[22] Most sports competed as a single division of sixteen schools with the exception of football, which was partitioned into large-school and small-school divisions:^[23]

Wauwatosa West and Whitefish Bay were moved over to the small-school division for football in 1982, bringing each division to eight schools.^[24] In 1983, Racine Case joined from the Parkland Conference and Racine Park joined from the Milwaukee Area Conference, reuniting the three high schools of the Racine Unified School District.^[25] For the last two years of the Suburban Conference's existence, it was aligned into two divisions for most sports based on enrollment size: the Gold Division contained larger schools and the Blue Division contained the smaller ones:^[26]

Racine Case and Racine Park joined the large-schools division for football, and they would remain there for the final two seasons of conference play.^[27]

The Suburban Conference was realigned out of existence in 1985, with most of its members joining three newly formed conferences in southeastern Wisconsin (the Big Nine, North Shore and Suburban Park conferences).^[28][29] The two Waukesha high schools joined an overhauled Braveland Conference, the four Milwaukee high schools rejoined the City Conference, and West Milwaukee joined the Parkland Conference (where it would remain until it closed in 1992).^[30]

 Blue Division  Gold Division