The Southeast Conference is a high school athletic conference consisting of large schools in southeastern Wisconsin. The conference and its member schools are affiliated with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.
The Southeast Conference was formed in 1993 as a fifteen-member superconference, taking all of its schools from three recently disbanded conferences. Five members came from the Big Nine (Kenosha Bradford, Kenosha Tremper, Racine Case, Racine Horlick and Racine Park), five from the Suburban Park (Kettle Moraine, Muskego, Nathan Hale, Oak Creek and West Allis Central) and four from the Braveland (Arrowhead, Mukwonago, Waukesha North and Waukesha South). The recently opened Waukesha West High School, which would have become Braveland Conference members but for its dissolution, rounded out the original membership roster of the Southeast Conference. Schools were subdivided by geography along previous conference alignments, and schedules were weighted to give more games to divisional opponents:
After a few years of competition, most of the schools in the Central and West Divisions were unhappy with the long travel distances experienced with facing schools in Racine and Kenosha. In addition, the WIAA approved a merger with the Wisconsin Independent Schools Athletic Association (an organization for private school athletics) to begin in 1997. In the wake of these developments, another round of realignment was approved for the high school conferences in southeastern Wisconsin. Two new conferences were created (Classic 8 and Greater Metro), and the Southeast Conference lost members to both of them. Six schools (Arrowhead, Kettle Moraine, Mukwonago, Waukesha North, Waukesha South and Waukesha West) joined the Classic 8, and two joined the Greater Metro (Nathan Hale and West Allis Central). The remaining seven schools accepted three new members into the Southeast Conference: two from the Woodland Conference (Franklin and South Milwaukee) and one from the Southern Lakes Conference (Burlington). The ten schools of the Southeast Conference were aligned into Northern and Southern divisions:
Within a few years after the Southeast Conference was realigned in 1997, the two smallest schools (Burlington and South Milwaukee) began to voice their displeasure at the long travel distances and competitive imbalance they faced as members. Both schools rejoined their former conferences in 2009, with Burlington returning to the Southern Lakes Conference and South Milwaukee reuniting with the Woodland Conference. The Southeast Conference dropped divisional alignments to compete as a single entity with the reduction to eight members. In 2012, Muskego left to join the Classic 8 Conference after the Kenosha Unified School District added a third high school on the west side of the city (Indian Trail High School and Academy). In 2025, Oak Creek left to become members of the Classic 8 Conference, decreasing the Southeast Conference's roster to seven schools.
In February 2019, in conjunction with the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association, the WIAA released a sweeping football-only realignment for Wisconsin to commence with the 2020 football season and run on a two-year cycle. The Southeast Conference was one of the few conferences in the state that stayed entirely intact after the realignment, and will be adding an eighth football member for the 2026-2027 realignment cycle. Rufus King International High School in Milwaukee will be leaving the Richardson Division of the Milwaukee City Conference to play in the Southeast Conference for at least the next two seasons.