The Southern Dairyland Conference is a high school

athletic conference An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams which play competitively against each other in a sports league. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller Division (sport), divisions, with the best teams competing at successively ...

with its membership concentrated in south central

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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 The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) is the regulatory body for all high school sports in Wisconsin. Its history dates to 1895, making it the earliest continually existing high school athletic organization in the country. ...

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 The Madison metropolitan area, also known as Greater Madison, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Madison, Wisconsin. The Madison, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), as defined by the Office of Management and Budget, consists of ...

in November 1958: Deerfield, Johnson Creek,

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and

Palmyra Palmyra ( ; Palmyrene dialect, Palmyrene: (), romanized: ''Tadmor''; ) is an ancient city in central Syria. It is located in the eastern part of the Levant, and archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first menti ...

. It became known as the Southern Dairyland in the local media to avoid confusion with an all-sport circuit called the

Dairyland Conference The Dairyland Conference is a high school athletic conference in west central Wisconsin. It was founded in 1959 and all member schools are affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. History 1959–1977 The Dairylan ...

that was inaugurated that same year in western Wisconsin. Three members of the new conference (Deerfield, Marshall and Palmyra) 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 The Madison Suburban Conference is a former high school athletic conference in Wisconsin, founded in 1926 and ending competition in 1969. Its members were located in south central Wisconsin, predominantly around the Madison, Wisconsin, Madison ar ...

. Norris Foundation in

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and

Williams Bay Williams Bay is a village in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. It is one of three municipalities on Geneva Lake. The population was 2,953 at the 2020 census. On June 22, 2024 the town was hit by an EF-1 tornado, there were no injurie ...

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 (Norris Farm, Palmyra, Williams Bay and Wisconsin School for the Deaf) formed the Indian Trails Conference (along with

Clinton Clinton is an English toponymic surname, indicating one's ancestors came from English places called Glympton or Glinton.Hanks, P. & Hodges, F. ''A Dictionary of Surnames''. Oxford University Press, 1988 Clinton has also been used as a given nam ...

and Northwestern Military & Naval Academy), which began competition in fall 1963. The other three former Southern Dairyland members (Deerfield, Johnson Creek and Marshall) joined the Madison Suburban Conference for the 1963 football season, a conference that they were already affiliated with for their other interscholastic sports.

Conference membership history

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(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:line value:black id:bg value:white PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:m bar:1 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Deerfield (1959-1962) bar:2 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Johnson Creek (1959-1962) bar:3 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Marshall (1959-1962) bar:4 color:lavender from:1959 till:1963 text:Palmyra (1959-1962) bar:5 color:lavender from:1960 till:1963 text:Norris Foundation (1960-1962) bar:6 color:lavender from:1960 till:1963 text:Williams Bay (1960-1962) bar:7 color:lavender from:1961 till:1963 text:Wisconsin School for the Deaf (1961-1962) ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:1 start:1959

List of conference champions

References

{{Wisconsin high school athletic conferences Wisconsin high school sports conferences Sports organizations established in 1959 1959 establishments in Wisconsin 1963 disestablishments in Wisconsin