The SWAPS Conference was founded in 1957 by five small high schools in southern Wisconsin.
Despite the name of the conference, only four of the five original members were private schools.
[1] Beloit Catholic and St. Mary's both belonged to the newly created Wisconsin Catholic Interscholastic Athletic Association,[2] and the two military academies (Northwestern Military & Naval Academy and St. John's Military Academy) did not belong to any sort of larger organization at that time.
A second public high school (Williams Bay) was added in 1958 after the dissolution of the Southern Regional Conference.
[4] The SWAPS Conference was disbanded after the 1960-1961 school year.