The Cook County High School League embracing all the public high schools in Chicago and its suburbs was one of the pioneer interscholastic leagues in the country. It came together during 1889-1890, conducting its first track and field meet in the spring of 1889, its first football championship in the fall of 1889, and its first baseball championship in the spring of 1890.
The formal date for the establishment of the Cook County High School Athletic League, which served Chicago and its suburbs, is 1898. Its creation, however, was really a matter of consolidation and rationalization of a conference that had already been in place for a decade. But even before the emergence of the Cook County League during 1889 and 1890, interscholastic competition of a sandlot variety had gone on for nearly a decade. During the years of this sandlot phase Chicago schoolboys were inventing interscholastic sports, undoubtedly patterning their approach after what they saw in the universities at the time.
The first two sports that Chicago area schools adopted for competition were—not surprisingly--football and baseball. No conclusive evidence has surfaced as to what year either sport was adopted, but it was probably sometime around 1881, at least for some of the suburban schools.
Read more about Cook County High School League: Football, Baseball, Track and Field, Indoor Baseball, Tennis, Basketball, End Years
Famous quotes containing the words cook, county, high, school and/or league:
“‘Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the County Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon,”
—Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 1)
“While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“We’re the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. C’mon be a glorified wreck like me.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)