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:
“Women find ways to give sense and meaning to daily lifeways to be useful in the community, to keep mind active and soul growing even while they change diapers and cook vegetables.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“In the County Tyrone, in the town of Dungannon,”
—Unknown. The Old Orange Flute (l. 1)
“We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“A sure proportion of rogue and dunce finds its way into every school and requires a cruel share of time, and the gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to youth, is grown a martinet, sore with suspicions; knows as much vice as the judge of a police court, and his love of learning is lost in the routine of grammars and books of elements.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the bestits all theyll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you moneyprovided you can prove to their satisfaction that you dont need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)