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:
“Mildred Pierce: You look down on me because I work for a living, don’t you? You always have. All right, I work. I cook food and sell it and make a profit on it, which, I might point out, you’re not too proud to share with me.
Monte Beragon: Yes, I take money from you, Mildred. But not enough to make me like kitchens or cooks. They smell of grease.
Mildred Pierce: I don’t notice you shrinking away from a fifty- dollar bill because it smells of grease.”
—Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973)
“It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“Green, green is El Aghir. It has a railway station,
And the wealth of its soil has borne many another fruit:
A mairie, a school and an elegant Salle de Fetes.
Such blessings, as I remarked, in effect, to the waiter,
Are added unto them that have plenty of water.”
—Norman Cameron (b. 1905)
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)