Merged Parkland Conference Handbook Down To Its Final Page; It's About Cowbells

WAUKESHA — The 43-page joint handbook governing Waukesha North and Waukesha South's return to a shared athletic conference is finished, except for page 43, which as of Tuesday afternoon remained a single unresolved line item: whether spectators may bring cowbells into the stands.

Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association paperwork formally reunited the two city schools in the revived seven-team Parkland Conference on Aug. 1, ending a decade in which North competed in the Greater Metro Conference and South in the Woodland Conference under separate rulebooks. Merging those rulebooks into one document went smoothly, according to South Athletic Director Patricia Gensemer, "right up until we got to noisemakers, and then it turned out we'd been very quietly disagreeing about noisemakers for ten years without either side knowing it."

Page 43

North's outgoing Greater Metro Conference rulebook has banned "artificial or amplified noisemakers" from stands since 2019, after a fan's air horn at a playoff game reportedly caused an official on the opposite sideline to blow his whistle mid-play, nullifying what would have been a 44-yard return. South's Woodland Conference rulebook, by contrast, has never restricted cowbells specifically, and several South booster groups have carried them to games for at least fifteen years without incident, provided the bell is "hand-rung, not motorized."

Waukesha North Athletic Director Michael Patterson, 51, said the discrepancy is exactly the kind of thing the merger was supposed to catch earlier. "This has been a significant organizational evolution for both departments," Patterson said. "We assumed 'noisemaker' meant the same thing to everybody. It turns out it meant air horns to us and it meant a specific beloved family trophy to them."

"It meant air horns to us and it meant a specific beloved family trophy to them."

— Michael Patterson, athletic director, Waukesha North

The trophy in question is the Fox River Bell, the cowbell-style prize awarded to the winner of the North-South football game since 1987, recovered from a district storage closet last week and tentatively scheduled to be back in play for the two schools' first conference matchup in late September. Gensemer said South's booster club has already asked, in writing, whether fans will still be permitted to ring smaller cowbells in the stands "in solidarity with the big one on the sideline," a question the merged handbook does not currently answer either way.

A Second Opinion, Uninvited

The dispute has drawn outside interest. Ned England, 70, of Backslide Way, attended Tuesday's public comment window at the district administration building and offered to help settle the matter using what he described as "field-tested sound equipment," which turned out to be his handheld radar gun, not a decibel meter. England acknowledged the device measures speed rather than volume but said he was "confident it would still pick something up" and offered to stand at midfield during a home game to find out. District staff thanked him and did not take him up on it.

Parkland Conference Commissioner Dan Voss said he would prefer the noisemaker question be resolved by both athletic departments rather than referred to the conference office, but confirmed the full handbook needs to be final before the WIAA's Aug. 20 realignment paperwork deadline. "Forty-two pages of agreement and one page of cowbells," Voss said. "I've seen worse odds."

Wednesday Night

The matter is expected to come up at Wednesday's mandatory 6:30 p.m. orientation session in the Waukesha South fieldhouse, where all 37 head and assistant coaches from both athletic departments will review the merged handbook in full. Gensemer said she has now fielded fourteen emails from coaches asking whether the session is mandatory for junior varsity staff, up from nine a week and a half ago. It remains mandatory.

One compromise circulating among South boosters ahead of the meeting would permit cowbells in the stands provided they are "clearly labeled ceremonial and rung at a volume the person three seats over can still hold a conversation over," a standard Patterson said he was "cautiously willing to workshop" but would not commit to in writing before Wednesday.