MONLPC Football Conference

The Marinette & Oconto-Northern Lakes-Packerland Conference, more commonly referred to as the MONLPC, is a former high school football conference comprising small schools in northeastern Wisconsin. Founded in 2017 and dissolved after the 2021 football season, its member schools were affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

History

The MONLPC Football Conference was formed in 2017 by members of three conferences in northeastern Wisconsin: the Marinette & Oconto, Northern Lakes and Packerland. It was created in reaction to the increasing number of schools in the region that were transitioning to eight-player football and featured an eight-player division in addition to large-school and small-school divisions for eleven-player football:

Even after the conference's formation, the influx of schools moving to eight-player football continued to drive the MONLPC's realignment. Florence was the first member to do so after the 2017 season, followed by five more programs after the 2018 season (Algoma, Elcho/White Lake, Suring, Three Lakes/Phelps and Wabeno/Laona). This allowed the Bowler/Gresham and Menominee Indian programs to join their primary home, the Central Wisconsin Conference, when they adopted an eight-player division in 2019. Coleman was shifted over to the MONLPC's small schools division in 2019, which would turn out to be the last for the two eleven-player divisions after they were realigned out of existence. This came after the WIAA and the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association unveiled a comprehensive realignment plan for Wisconsin's high school football conferences to be refreshed every two years. The nine displaced schools either joined a newly reconstituted Packerland Conference (Kewaunee, Oconto, Peshtigo, Southern Door and Sturgeon Bay) or the new Northwoods Football Conference (Coleman, Crandon, Crivitz and Northern Elite). Another change brought by realignment was the MONLPC's change to a twelve-member, two-division conference sponsoring eight-player football only:

This alignment would last until the 2022-2023 competition cycle, when the eight-player divisions of the MONLPC were shuttered, just as their eleven-player counterparts were two years earlier. Eight programs (Algoma, Gibraltar, Gillett, Lena/St. Thomas Aquinas, NEW Lutheran/Oneida, Sevastopol, Suring and Wausaukee) formed the new Across the Bay Conference, while the other four (Elcho/White Lake, Florence, Three Lakes/Phelps and Wabeno/Laona constituted two thirds of the new Northern Border Conference, along with Niagara and Goodman/Pembine after the breakup of the Northern Elite football cooperative.

Conference membership history

11-player

8-player

Membership timeline

11-player

MONLPC Large MONLPC Small

8-player

MONLPC East MONLPC West

List of state champions

List of conference champions

11-player

8-player