PLATTEVILLE — The landscape of Southwest Wisconsin high school activities may change radically in the next few years.
The Southwest Wisconsin Conference (SWC) is proposing to expand by taking four schools from the Southwest Wisconsin Activities League (SWAL), with the other four schools moving to three other area conferences.
The SWC’s proposal would grow the SWC from six teams — Dodgeville, Lancaster, Platteville, Prairie du Chien, Richland Center and River Valley — to 10 by taking Cuba City, Darlington, Fennimore and Mineral Point from the SWAL.
The SWC plan would then move:
• Southwestern to the Six Rivers West, joining Belmont, Benton, Cassville, Highland, Potosi, River Ridge and Shullsburg.
• Iowa-Grant to the Six Rivers East, joining Albany, Argyle, Barneveld, Black Hawk, Juda, Monticello and Pecatonica.
• Boscobel and Riverdale to the Ridge & Valley Conference, joining De Soto, Ithaca, Kickapoo, La Farge, North Crawford, Seneca, Wauzeka-Steuben and Weston.
Platteville activities director Mike Foley said the proposal may not take effect until the 2029-30 school year, assuming the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) approves the SWC’s proposal.
The Platteville Board of Education approved the proposal Wednesday, Dec. 11. Foley said SWC school boards are being asked to vote for the proposal.
The SWC’s proposal is the result of the difficulty of finding 14 nonconference opponents to fill the 24-game basketball regular season. The six-team SWC plays 10 conference games, most often against SWAL and Six Rivers schools.
Foley said the Six Rivers Conference started scheduling teams from each division as conference games in basketball this season, resulting in a 19-game boys conference season. In girls basketball, because of the Potosi-Cassville co-op in the West and the Albany-Monticello and Argyle-Pecatonica co-ops in the East, West girls teams play 15 conference games and East girls teams play 14 conference games, with separate East and West titles.
Six Rivers West versus East games in baseball and softball also counted as conference games last season with teams playing against their own division twice and the other division once, as with basketball this season. This coming season Six Rivers baseball and softball will be in one division, with teams playing the other Six Rivers teams twice each.
Foley said the SWC proposal includes potential homes for the SWAL’s other schools because “basically we have to do the WIAA’s work” to get a conference realignment proposal approved.
The proposal does not affect football, which realigns conferences in even-numbered years, and Foley said the proposal also does not affect wrestling. It also would not affect the Platteville swimming team, which competes in the Southern Lakes Swim Conference, with schools as far east as Burlington and Lake Geneva. It would affect nonathletic school activities such as music, in which conference activities take place.
All of the SWC schools are in Division 3 for basketball, except for Lancaster, which is in Division 4. All of the SWAL teams are in Division 4 for basketball except for Southwestern, which is in Division 5. All of the Six Rivers teams are in Division 5 for basketball except for Argyle-Pecatonica, which is in Division 4.
The SWC and the current SWAL are the result of the splitting of the last iteration of the Southwest Wisconsin Athletic League, which between 1987 and 2003 had the current SWC plus Cuba City in its large division and the rest of the current SWAL schools in the small division. That conference’s bylaws required any small-division schools that grew larger in enrollment than large-division schools to switch divisions.
Then in 2003-04, Boscobel’s enrollment grew larger than Cuba City’s. Boscobel did not want to continue in the large division, and eventually the conference split, with the eight smallest schools going into the current SWAL and the remainder forming the SWC.
“It was a very ugly breakup,” Foley said.
