Field Hockey: A One-Time IHSA Sport
By ROBERT PRUTER
In 1975, the IHSA, as part of its rapid expansion of sports in the early 1970s, inaugurated a state championship for field hockey. The first championship was held at New Trier West High School in Northfield. Rockford (West) won the championship. For seven years, the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) sponsored a state field hockey tournament for girls in the fall of each year. The sport, however, failed to grow, attracting only a few downstate schools, notably Edwardsville and DeKalb, and several schools on the north shore, notably New Trier East and Lake Forest.
The IHSA thus ended its sponsorship of girls field hockey after the fall 1981 season. Around a dozen schools chose to continue to offer the sport, and formed the Illinois High School Field Hockey Association (IHSFHA).
Field hockey in the United States is almost an entirely a women's game. The sport began in the early nineteenth century in England as a game for men. However, during the 1860s and 1870s, field hockey was avidly adopted by women and girls in the colleges and academies. It became the first team sport deemed acceptable for women to play. The game came to the United States in 1901, when the English physical education instructor, Constance Applebee, introduced the sport at a summer seminar at Harvard University. The game was received enthusiastically and through Applebee's subsequent evangelism, it spread through the elite women's colleges, beginning with Vassar College.
The sport was soon adopted by the private academies, and by 1907 public high schools in New England were taking up the sport. The Girls Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League, in New York City, introduced the sport in the spring of 1910. While the private academies competed in interschool contests, the public schools under the noncompetitive ideology of the day limited the field hockey to intramural contests.
As early as 1903, coeds at the University of Chicago were playing field hockey, but it would be a few more years before the sport in Illinois filtered down to the secondary school level. In the fall of 1916, the schoolgirls at Schurz High were playing field hockey intramurally. By the fall of 1921, the school had found competition with the Columbia College of Physical Education and Oral Expression. In two annual matches held at Washington Park in 1921 and 1922, Schurz beat the older students both times. The school was producing a large number of enthusiastic students eager to learn the game. Schurz's 1923 yearbook reported, "The popularity of hockey has been growing steadily until now it ranks with basketball and baseball among the girls."
Schurz, 1922
Other Chicago public high schools were slower to take up the sport, but 30 miles west of Chicago along the Fox River, the sport was introduced in the fall of 1923 at Elgin High School. Perhaps because the game was played by the upper crust in toney schools, physical educators had always given more latitude in allowing competition. Whereas, in most all sports in most all suburban schools ringing Chicago interschool competition was absolutely banned, the Elgin girls actually competed in an interschool field hockey game that year, easily beating Elgin Academy 6-0. The experiment was not repeated in subsequent years.
Elgin, 1923
Hyde Park High adopted field hockey in the fall of 1926, but abided by a newly enforced ban on interscholastic competition, by keeping the game on the intramural level. Schurz High, however, in the fall of 1927 began violating the ban by beginning an annual series with the North Shore Country Day, a private school located on the north shore in Wilmette. One of the Schurz players was one of the team's top players and co-captain, future Olympian Nan Gindele. She competed in the javelin in the 1932 Games. While the game was played in the fall, usually through late November (when an outside game was played), sometimes the girls would play in the spring. Intramural competition usually took place between class teams. From the interclass competition, Schurz would pick the best girls to represent the school in outside competition.
Hyde Park, 1930
In the fall of 1932, there was a lot of outside competition, if the write-up in the Schurz yearbook can be believed. On November, Schurz participated in a Play Day Meet, on the Midway, at the University of Chicago. The yearbook wrote the meet up as school on school matches, where Schurz successively defeated Thornton High, University High, and New Trier to win the meet. This kind of competition goes against the very foundation of what a play day was supposed to be. In a normal play day, as conceived by physical educators to moderate competition between schools, the girls from the different schools would be mixed into ad hoc teams, often taking colors to identify the teams. Again, field hockey somehow enjoyed a certain latitude not allowed other sports. At the end of the month, Schurz played their annual rival, North Shore Country Day. It was the last interschool match played by Schurz. Chicago school authorities again cracked down on violations of the ban against interschool sports. The following year, four of Schurz girls participated in the All-Chicago High School Girls' Field Hockey team.
After the early 1930s, for the next several decades, field hockey continued to be played interscholastically by private academies who were not members of the IHSA, notably North Shore Country Day, Chicago Latin, Lake Forest Academy, and Roycemore. The girls of New Trier High in Winnetka were avid participants in field hockey, but because the public school was a member of the IHSA they could not compete against other teams. The school's athletic field was annually used by the North Shore Field Hockey Association, which sponsored a national tournament. Many New Trier girls were members of the association.
Given the long history of field hockey as a girls sports activity, the IHSA in the early 1970s probably thought it was a natural to add field hockey to its growing schedule of sports for girls. While the 1975-1981 period saw a sponsored state championship, the sport never grew, forcing the IHSA to end its sponsorship.
Despite the termination of the IHSA state meet, around a dozen schools chose to continue to offer the sport, and formed the Illinois High School Field Hockey Association (IHSFHA). In 1982, these schools participated in the Lake Forest Field Hockey Invitational, which was considered the equivalent of the state championship, in lieu of a state tournament. The following year, however, the IHSFHA sponsored its first state tournament. In 2003, 14 schools in the Chicago area were supporting field hockey teams. Many of the schools were private academies, such as Lake Forest Academy and North Shore Country Day, which had for decades sponsored field hockey for girls. Most of the public schools competing are located on the north shore, but two long-term programs were being offered by Oak Park in the western suburbs and Homewood-Flossmoor in the south suburbs.
In the far south end of the state, Edwardsville, also fielded a team, but it engaged in competition with St. Louis-area schools in the Midwest Regional Field Hockey conference.
Footnotes available upon request. Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.