The Southern Lakes Conference is a high school athletic conference in Wisconsin, founded in 1953 and consisting of eight schools located in southeastern Wisconsin.
In 1961, Big Foot High School in Walworth joined[4], increasing membership to nine schools. A tenth school (Salem Central, now Westosha Central) joined in 1969[5], and in 1970, membership increased to twelve with the addition of Union Grove and Waterford. That same year, the Southern Lakes Conference was split into Eastern and Western Divisions[6]:
Eastern Division
Western Division
Burlington
Badger
Mukwonago
Big Foot
Salem Central
Delavan-Darien
Union Grove
East Troy
Waterford
Elkhorn
Wilmot
Whitewater
In 1980, Mukwonago left to join the Parkland Conference[7] as part of a major realignment of southeastern Wisconsin high schools. Big Foot followed them out of the conference two years later, and they were replaced by Jefferson[8] and Milton, with Badger moving to the Eastern Division to keep divisions at six members each, an alignment that would remain in place until 1997[9]:
In 1997, all of the schools in the Eastern Division left the Southern Lakes Conference: Burlington joined the Southeast Conference,[10] and the remaining schools formed the Lakeshore Conference[11] along with St. Catherine's High School in Racine and St. Joseph High School in Kenosha. Fort Atkinson joined the Southern Lakes that same year to bring conference membership to seven schools in a single division. In 2008, the five public schools in the Lakeshore Conference (Badger, Union Grove, Waterford, Westosha Central and Wilmot) rejoined the Southern Lakes Conference. They replaced five schools that exited the conference: three joined the Rock Valley Conference[12] (East Troy, Jefferson and Whitewater) and two joined the Badger Conference[13] (Fort Atkinson and Milton). Burlington rejoined the Southern Lakes from the Southeast Conference the next year[14], and Beloit Memorial became the latest addition to the Southern Lakes when they joined in 2023 from the Big Eight Conference[15]. They replaced Delavan-Darien, who left for the Rock Valley Conference that same year.
