March 12, 2026
By TIM HUNDT
VIROQUA Wis. – The Viroqua Area Schools athletic programs will officially have a new home starting in the 2027 to 2028 school year.
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Board of Control approved a request by Viroqua High School to join the Southwest Wisconsin Conference. The decision reverses an earlier ruling that initially denied the move and ends a lengthy administrative effort to find a more competitively balanced athletic environment for local students.
The move will affect all sports programs except football and hockey which operate under different alignment cycles.
The effort to switch leagues began publicly during an October 2025 school board meeting where Athletic Director Dan Brown detailed the enrollment disparities negatively impacting Viroqua student athletes in the Coulee Conference. Brown explained that the Southwest Wisconsin Conference offered a landscape of rural schools with enrollments much closer to Viroqua.
“The largest school in the Coulee conference has an enrollment twice of our size and this leads to some pretty significant disparities of outcome,” said Brown. “We are considering filing an application with the WIAA November one with a proposal to leave the Coulee conference.”
Brown noted that Viroqua currently has around 330 students while the largest school in the Coulee Conference boasts roughly 570 students. He told the board that the Southwest Wisconsin Conference consists of schools mostly around 400 students or less making it a much closer fit.
He also pointed out that the new league does not feature private schools which he argued provides a material difference regarding competitive advantage. The board supported the administration exploring the switch at that early stage.
“Good for exploring that,” said Board President Angie Lawrence. “Great thank you.”
However the path to the new conference was not a smooth journey. During the December 2025 board meeting Brown and High School Principal Jason Cress announced that the WIAA conference realignment task force had rejected the initial application of the district. The committee voted overwhelmingly to advise the Blackhawks to remain in the Coulee Conference.
Cress told the board that the WIAA committee felt the benefits to Viroqua were not substantial enough to offset the hardships caused to the Coulee Conference dropping to just six schools. Cress expressed deep disappointment noting that the move was entirely focused on benefiting the student athletes and the community.
“We were disappointed because one reason we are doing this is to benefit our student athletes families and our community,” said Cress. “One could make the argument that when the Southwest Wisconsin Conference was formed we probably made a mistake joining at that point in time, and so in many aspects, we are looking at correcting that mistake now.”
The district did not give up and requested a five minute appeal hearing in January. Brown presented the case of the district in person highlighting that Viroqua enrollment is expected to drop 25 percent over the next eight years making the move to a conference of similar sized schools even more vital.
The appeal was a success resulting in a near unanimous vote in favor of allowing the school to make the switch. Cress updated the school board on the turnaround during their February meeting.
“Last month we were here and we won our appeal 15 to one,” said Cress. “We did find out athletic directors in the Coulee Conference are appealing our appeal.”
Despite the pushback from the departing conference the Viroqua victory held strong through the final steps of the process. The WIAA Board of Control ultimately granted final approval.
The new Southwest Wisconsin Conference alignment will include Prairie du Chien, Lancaster, Platteville, River Valley, Dodgeville, and Richland Center. While school officials acknowledged the new conference will add approximately 10 minutes to average road trips for league games they believe the benefits of competing against schools with similar rural characteristics and enrollments far outweigh the additional travel time.
Because of these logistical hurdles, the district plans to address football realignment during its specific application cycle next year. If a separate conference switch for football is eventually pursued and approved, it would go into effect for the 2028-2029 school year, which is one year after the rest of the sports programs transition to the Southwest Wisconsin Conference in 2027-2028
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