History
Prior to the creation of the South Shore Conference, the public high schools in Racine and Kenosha were part of the Big Eight, a conference of large high schools in southern Wisconsin that also included schools from Madison, Janesville and Beloit. As new schools were added to districts due to population growth, membership had experienced a net increase to twelve by the end of the 1960s. [1] Tensions increased between the Madison-area schools and those in southeastern Wisconsin, and the South Shore Conference was formed in 1970 after the five schools in Racine and Kenosha were forced out by the rest of the Big Eight members. [2] [3] This was a move that was met with some opposition by the WIAA since a five-team conference was widely seen as inadequately sized. [4] [5] After several years of attempting to merge the South Shore Conference with several large conferences in southern Wisconsin [6] (including a failed attempt to create a cross-border league with high schools in northern Illinois [7] [8] ), the conference was dissolved in 1980. The five schools were spread out over four existing conferences [9] [10] before reconstituting as the Big Nine Conference (along with four high schools on the south side of Milwaukee) in 1985.
