North Shore Conference

13km
8.1miles

   

Location of Original North Shore Conference Members

The North Shore Conference was one of three conferences formed (along with the Big Nine and Suburban Park) during the realignment of high school athletic conferences in southeastern Wisconsin for the 1985-86 school year. Six members came from the Braveland Conference (Cedarburg, Germantown, Grafton, Homestead, Nicolet and Port Washington) and four came from the disbanded Suburban Conference (Shorewood, Wauwatosa East, Wauwatosa West and Whitefish Bay).^[1] Other names considered for the conference were the Heritage Conference, Lakeshore Ten and North Suburban Conference.^[2]

Shorewood left the North Shore Conference in 1992 to take West Milwaukee's place in the Parkland Conference after the school closed its doors.^[3] In 1993, Wauwatosa East and Wauwatosa West left to become charter members of the new Woodland Conference, with Menomonee Falls moving over from the defunct Braveland Conference as a replacement.^[4] They would only last four years in the North Shore Conference and were replaced by Milwaukee Lutheran High School in 1997.^[5] Milwaukee Lutheran was in the process of joining the WIAA as part of the merger with the Wisconsin Independent Schools Athletic Association, and was the first (and to date, only) private high school in the conference.

Membership would stay consistent for the next twenty years before further realignment occurred. In 2017, Germantown left to join the Greater Metro Conference and Milwaukee Lutheran became a member of the Woodland Conference. They were replaced by four schools who were displaced after the dissolution of the Wisconsin Little Ten Conference: Hartford Union, Slinger, West Bend East and West Bend West.^[6] The North Shore Conference will become a seven-member loop in 2025 with the loss of Port Washington, West Bend East and West Bend West to the Glacier Trails Conference.^[7] For the 2027-28 school year, the North Shore Conference will be losing Grafton to the Glacier Trails Conference and welcoming back two former members from the Greater Metro Conference (Germantown and Menomonee Falls) per the WIAA Board of Control's ruling in March 2026.^[8]

In February 2019, in conjunction with the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association, the WIAA released a sweeping football-only realignment for Wisconsin to commence with the 2020 football season and run on a two-year cycle.^[9] The North Shore Conference's original football group consisted of full conference members Cedarburg, Hartford Union Homestead, Nicolet, Slinger, West Bend East, West Bend West and Whitefish Bay.^[10] This alignment is set to stay in place until the 2026-2027 cycle, when the conference loses three football members. West Bend East and West Bend West will move to their primary conference affiliation in the Glacier Trails Conference, which is set to begin competition next year as an all-sport conference before its first football season in 2026. The two schools will be accompanied by full NSC members Nicolet to bring the alignment to eight schools. Three schools are currently slated to replace them: Waukesha West of the Classic 8 Conference, Menomonee Falls of the Greater Metro Conference and Wisconsin Lutheran of the Woodland Conference.^[11][12]