OZAUKEE COUNTY — The North Shore Conference will be changing, starting with the 2025-26 school year.
In a process that has seen some twists and turns during a lengthy process of realignment discussion, the WIAA passed a recommendation that will turn the current 10-school configuration into a new seven-school league.
Local schools Cedarburg, Grafton and Homestead will remain a part of the NSC, along with Hartford, Nicolet, Slinger and Whitefish Bay.
At one point in the process, a proposal was put forth that would have moved Grafton to a new, unnamed conference, but that recommendation was not approved and the newly-adopted plan was put forward.
Current NSC schools Port Washington, West Bend East and West Bend West will move to a new league that will also include Kettle Moraine Lutheran, Kewaskum, Plymouth and Sheboygan South. That league will be named at a later date.
The new conference configuration will not impact football, which will retain the current eight-team leagues in a sport-specific realignment that impacted schools around the state beginning with the 2020 season.
As a result of the realignment plan being adopted, long-standing rivalries between the Black Hawks, Bulldogs and Highlanders will be preserved, along with series with the Blue Dukes and Knights that date back several decades.
While the Pirates will be changing leagues, Port Washington could look to continue long-standing series with North Shore teams, specifically Cedarburg and Grafton, in nonconference competition. An example of that would be football, where the teams have maintained an annual series of games since sport-specific realignment went into place.