The Marinette & Oconto-Northern Lakes-Packerland Conference, more commonly referred to as the MONLPC, is a former high school footballconference 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.
The MONLPC Football Conference was formed in 2017 by members of three conferences in northeastern Wisconsin: the Marinette & Oconto, Northern Lakes and Packerland.[1] It was created in reaction to the increasing number of schools in the region that were transitioning to eight-player football[2] and featured an eight-player division in addition to large-school and small-school divisions for eleven-player football:
MONLPC Large
MONLPC Small
MONLPC-8
Algoma
Crandon
Bowler/Gresham
Coleman
Crivitz
Gibraltar
Kewaunee
Elcho/White Lake
Gillett
Oconto
Florence
Lena/St. Thomas Aquinas
Peshtigo
Northern Elite
Menominee Indian
Southern Door
Suring
NEW Lutheran
Sturgeon Bay
Three Lakes/Phelps
Oneida Nation
Wabeno/Laona
Sevastopol
Wausaukee
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,[3] followed by five more programs after the 2018 season (Algoma, Elcho/White Lake, Suring, Three Lakes/Phelps and Wabeno/Laona).[4] 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.[5]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.[6] 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).[7] Another change brought by realignment was the MONLPC's change to a twelve-member, two-division conference sponsoring eight-player football only:[8]
