Southern Dairyland Conference


The Southern Dairyland Conference is a high school athletic conference with its membership concentrated in south central Wisconsin. Football was the only sport sponsored by this conference, which was founded in 1959 and disbanded after the 1962 football season. All conference members were affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

History

The Southern Dairyland Conference, also known by its official title of the Dairyland High School Football Conference, was formed by four high schools in the Madison metropolitan area in November 1958: Deerfield, Johnson Creek, Marshall and Palmyra. It became known as the Southern Dairyland in the local media to avoid confusion with an all-sport circuit called the Dairyland Conference that was inaugurated that same year in western Wisconsin. Three members of the new conference were previously members of the Southern Regional Conference, which sponsored eight-man football before it was disbanded after the 1958 football season. All three schools made the decision to transition to eleven-man football for the 1959 season. They were joined by Johnson Creek, a school that already sponsored eleven-man football and were members of the Madison Suburban Conference. Norris Foundation in Mukwonago and Williams Bay joined the conference for the 1960 season when they also moved to eleven-man football and were in search of affiliation. The conference's membership roster was completed in 1961, when Wisconsin School for the Deaf in Delavan joined the loop. Competition lasted until the 1962 season, when four schools formed the Indian Trails Conference, which began competition in fall 1963. The other three former Southern Dairyland members joined the Madison Suburban Conference for the 1963 football season, a conference that they were already affiliated with for their other interscholastic sports.

Membership timeline


DateFormat = yyyy
ImageSize = width:900 height:auto barincrement:20
Period = from:1959 till:1963
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal
PlotArea = right:30 left:0 bottom:50 top:5
Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb
id:line value:black
id:bg value:white
PlotData=
width:15 textcolor:black shift: anchor:from fontsize:m
bar:1 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Deerfield
bar:2 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Johnson Creek
bar:3 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Marshall
bar:4 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Palmyra
bar:5 color:lavender from:1960 till:1963 text:Norris Foundation
bar:6 color:lavender from:1960 till:1963 text:Williams Bay
bar:7 color:lavender from:1961 till:1963 text:Wisconsin School for the Deaf

ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:1 start:1959