In Illinois, track and field was the third sport after baseball and football to garner interscholastic interest, when in 1889 several schools representing Chicago and its surrounding suburbs came together to conduct a Cook County meet. The developments in the state, however, lagged considerably behind some of the private schools in the East, notably in the New York metropolitan area, where a few private schools inaugurated a track and field meet in 1879, which may have been the very first interscholastic track meet in the country. In the New York Times story on the event the reporter took pains to define the word "interscholastic" as though it was a new term to his readers. Another early meet in the East was the Harvard Interscholastic, founded in 1885 by Harvard University for New England's prep schools.
On the other hand Illinois public schools were no slower than the public schools in other sections of the country, and compared to most other areas appear to have been unusually pioneering in the sport. Boston public schools began competing in track and field in 1889. Some public schools in Brooklyn, as members of the Long Island League, began participating in track and field in 1894. In Michigan, at least one school began holding interclass field days as early as 1889, but track and field took hold slowly and the state's first multi-school interscholastic did not take place until 1895.
In Illinois the earliest reference to track and field dates back to December of 1886, when a West Division correspondent for the High School Journal noted that "there has been a great deal going on in athletic sports down at our school. The question of racing has been agitated, and several races have been spoken of between the North-Siders [North Division High], who are anxious to be beaten. Of course we have accepted all challenges, but will not run until next spring. ("Athletics" was a common term for track and field sports at the time.) Evanston held an intramural field day in November of 1887, and Hyde Park held a field day for its athletes in June of 1888, which the Tribune made considerable note of: "The first 'field day' games of the Hyde Park High School were held yesterday at Jackson Park. Some 500 members and their friends attended. The spectators included many ladies." Not only were ladies present among the spectators, but they were also present among the contestants, participating in a 25-yard race and a baseball throwing contest.
Sports activities in the high schools during the 1880s were solely generated by the high school students, and Chicago students followed the pattern of organization found elsewhere in high schools and colleges. The students would form an "athletic association," through which the collection of dues would raise money for sports activities. Field days along with baseball teams were two of the first sponsorships undertaken by such associations.
All these activities by the various schools built up to Illinois first interscholastic field day being held in 1889 by an assemblage of Cook County schools. In April of that year the schools sent student delegates to a meeting for the express purpose of forming an interscholastic field day. The collective newspaper of all the schools, High School Journal, reported:
"With a vim did the schools respond to the invitation to meet at the S.D.H.S. [South Division High School] Quite an imposing assemblage the delegates made. The N.D.H.S. [North Division High School] was there with flying colors and immense paper badges. With good force did Evanston, Oakland, and W.D.H.S. [West Division High School] turn out. In all there were about 60 present.
Mr. Frankenstein called the meeting to order and Mr. Shaw was then elected chairman of the meeting. Upon the motion being made that a committee be formed and instructed to draw up a constitution for an athletic association, a point of order was raised that the convention had met to arrange for a Field Day, not an association. The chairman decided the point not well taken. An appeal was made and liberally debated. Finally when the vote was taken the chair's decision was reversed. A motion was then put amid cheers and carried unanimously to have a Field Day.
Delegates were chosen from each school to form a committee to carry forward the plans for the Field Day and to elect a captain."
Hyde Park was one of the leading schools in athletics and its delegates were not happy with the results of the meeting. A Hyde Parker groused: "The meeting at the S.D.H.S. was not a satisfactory one as no definite idea seemed to be in mind. Let us think rather about an organization to include not only field days but athletics in general." The Hyde Park delegate was indeed farsighted to see the need of a permanent organization, rather than an ad hoc one.
The delegates decided that financial support would partly come from the contestants, charging a fee of 25 cents for each event entered. The type of events for which the delegates chose to conduct competition shows that the sport of track and field was still evolving. The events were: 100-yd dash, 440-yd dash, mile run, 120-yd hurdles, mile walk, running broad jump, running high jump, standing broad jump, standing high jump, shot put (six pounds), pole vault, kicking football, batting baseball, throwing baseball (for ladies), potato sack race, 50-yd carry race, mile bicycle race, tug-of-war, and janitors' race. The last event listed was 'march homewards.'The committee required an entrance fee of 25 cents of each participant to help defray the costs involved in the meet.
Due to delays, the Cook County schools' meet was not actually held until July 2. The field of competition was the Wanderers Cricket Grounds, 37th and Indiana. Only five schools attended--North Division, South Division, Hyde Park, Oakland, and Evanston. For the winner of each event there was a prize denoted by a local business, usually an item of sports equipment or an article of clothing. The shot put winner, for example, received a tennis racket denoted by A. G. Spalding; 120-yd hurdles winner, a gold-headed cane from F. M. Shroad jewelers; broad jump winner, a pair of athletic shoes from C. W. Lapham; the batting baseball winner, a baseball from Jenny & Graham; and the 100-yard dash winner, a scarf pin from Joseph & Fish jewelers.
In addition some local newspapers donated medals for winners of certain events. For example, the pole vault winner received a medal from the Chicago Tribune; the high kick winner, a medal from the Inter-Ocean, and the half-mile winner, a medal from the Herald. The awarding of these prizes should not be considered as we would today, the first step towards the road to professionalized ruin. Undoubtedly the organizers in 1889 considered these prizes harmless. It was before the ideology of amateurism had fully taken hold, and rules were not so stringent regarding exactly what constituted professionalism.
In late June 1890 the Cook County schools held another field day with some 600 competitors and spectators and an increase in the number of participant schools with eleven represented. The field was again the Wanderers Cricket Grounds. Gold medals were given to the winners and silver medals to the second-place finishers, but not in all cases. Other more practical prizes were dispensed to some of the contestants, among them a set of Indian clubs, a tennis racquet, suit of clothes, boxing gloves, athletic shoes, and a tennis shirt. This time a team championship was recognized, Lake View. The events were the more standard track-and-field contests as well as bicycle races. Gone were the potato-sack races and the like.
By March 1891, enthusiasm for a grander and more formal field day championship was growing. A letter to the Journal from a student at Lake View gives an idea how the field day was viewed as a social event:
"I would like through your columns to raise my voice in regard to a Field Day of the Cook County High Schools. Let us have one! It is none too early to begin discussion, for there will be plenty to do after a definite conclusion of time and place has been reached, and they are big questions. Personally I favor a rousing big picnic at Washington Park. In the morning we can have the last of the league baseball games--the schedule can be so arranged--and possibly some of the sports, especially the long runs, a team race--with teams from each school--tennis and other school contests. In the afternoon--about four o'clock--have the individual events. Save some of our dinner. There may be enough of what the contestants dare not eat before and cannot now, and have a moonlight supper, boat ride, and wind up with a glorious contest of singing on the water. Boys in the other schools, talk the matter up and let us know what sport the scheme is met with. Then we will have a convention, delegates from each school, and then we will have a field day."
On March 28, the delegates met voted to "make the Field Day organization a permanent one," satisfying the desires first voiced by Hyde Park two years earlier. The delegates also voted to award a pennant to the school that won the most events, and again expenses were defrayed by charging a 25 cents entrance fee. But admission of 25 cents was also charged. On June 13, the Tribune reported on the "Cook County School Union Schools" third annual field day held on the Chicago Cricket Club's grounds at Parkside. Participating schools were Hyde Park, Englewood, South Division, West Division, Northwest Division, Oak Park, LaGrange (Lyons), English, Lake View, and Evanston. Taking first, second, and third place respectively were Oak Park, Lake View, and Hyde Park. Bicycle races were still a part of field day and would be through 1899.
The Cook County meets, although organized by student delegates, could not have taken place without the support and sponsorship of adult authorities. The material prizes and medals were donated by various city newspapers and retail shops, the grounds were provided by the Wanderer's Cricket Club, and the judges and other officials were adults. T. S. Quincy, who was president of the Wanderer's club, also served as the chief judge of the meet.
Clearly track and field established itself during 1889 to 1891 as an organized sport in which participating schools thought themselves members of a Cook County conference, and these developments paralleled similar developments in football and baseball among those schools.
Up through the 1892 meet, which drew some 800 spectators, the organizers continued to award material prizes. Increasingly gold and silver medals became the standard, and these were of substantial monetary worth judging by the practice of getting newspapers and other private firms to sponsor them. Among the material prizes in the 1892 meet were boxing gloves, a sweater, and a tennis racket. The winner of the running high jump got a more creative prize, a complimentary subscription to Outing, one of the premier sporting magazines of the day.
By the 1893 Cook County meet the material prizes were no longer evident, and winners were given the standard medal prizes. Perhaps the organizers had second thoughts on the kinds of prizes they had been awarding in the previous years' meets, thinking they were not suitable for amateur high schoolers. The quality and precious metal content in the medals probably was reduced as well, the medals representing a more symbolic than material prize. During the 1890s, Lake View, Hyde Park, and Englewood dominated Cook County competition.
The contrast between the East and Midwest was most dramatic in the degree of interscholastic activity among their private schools. Whereas New York and Boston saw their first private schools competition in 1879 and 1885 respectively, Chicago private and parochial schools did not get involved in track and field competition until the 1890s. Northwestern Military Academy in Highland Park and Morgan Park Military Academy both began a field days in 1891.
A Roman Catholic school, DeLaSalle Institute, held its first field day in 1893. The Tribune noted the meet's historical importance, saying, "The exercises of yesterday were the first of the kind ever given in this city by a Catholic high school." The following year DeLaSalle included St. Ignatius College and St. Patrick's Academy in its field day. The first private schools' interscholastic meet was not held until 1895, when the Preparatory League held its inaugural championship games. Competing were Princeton-Yale, Southside Academy, Harvard School, and University School. The following year Lake Forest Academy, Morgan Park Academy, and Northwestern Academy formed the Academic League and conducted a track and field championship.
In February of 1893 the University of Illinois announced its sponsorship of a meet for all the Illinois high schools, the first state tournament in the country. It sent a circular to each school announcing the meet, which said in part:
"There will be held in this city on Saturday, May 20, 1893, in the University of Illinois athletic park, and under the auspices of the University of Illinois Athletic Association, an Inter-Scholastic Field Day, for the purpose of deciding and awarding the championship in athletics, and for perfecting a permanent organization among the High Schools of Illinois. All High Schools are earnestly invited to send contestants, all of whom must be certified by the principal of the school to be bona fide students in the school they represent."
The circular was addressed to each school's captain of the track and field team or head of its athletic association. For example, one recipient was Wallie McCornack, Englewood's captain of its track and field team as well as the student-run Athletic Association (McCornack would go on to coach college football at Dartmouth and Northwestern.). As the University's Athletic Association was likewise student-run the relationship between the institution and high schools was almost like that of big brother to little brothers. On the other hand, there was a considerable degree of adult institutional control in that the University's athletic department under E. K. Hall was the main sponsor of the event, and the games committee consisted wholly of University of Illinois staff. That the students needed to defer to their schools' principals for permission to attend is also significant. Still it was each high school's athletic association or team captain who corresponded with the university and arranged the team's participation. There was no adult coach, and each track team was handled by student leadership, a captain and a manager.
The schoolboys of the Cook County schools recognized the meet's importance in the development of interscholastic sports. An editorial in the Englewood High School Journal touched on what high schoolers felt their relationship to the university ought to be, commenting:
"The Inter-High-School tournament as proposed by the Athletic Association of the University of Illinois will be perhaps the first of its kind in the history of the state. If this is a success it will be followed by others. The results of these meetings will be a better knowledge of college life, resulting from meeting and associating with college men and a consequent desire and ambition for college training. They will give the different High Schools a closer connection than his hitherto existed, and will create a friendly relationship, which will make every school a rival of every other school, not only in athletics, but in study."
The attempt to form a permanent statewide organization for all the high schools anticipated by a decade the formation of the Illinois High School Athletic Association. Most interesting all the invited parties to the meeting the night prior to the state meet were student delegates.
"The evening preceding the games the delegates from the different schools were called together by Mr. Cleaves Bennent of the University of Illinois. A draft of a constitution for the Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association was presented. Mr. White of Hyde Park objected to clauses giving the University of Illinois a vote on the executive committee, but after being laughed at by the delegates and sat down upon by the chairman he sat down. A clause giving the presidency to the winning team and making graduates ineligible for office was incorporated and the constitution was adopted with only two votes in the negative--Hyde Park and Lake View."
As had been the history of Hyde Park, the students of that school seemed to exert a greater degree of initiative in the handling of athletics and their organization than their counterparts at other schools. The arrogance of the Hyde Park delegate to demand the exclusion of their host from such an organization is amazing. After the meet was over the delegates met again and voted on student officers. In any case, nothing ever came of this state organization, probably because it rested on shifting base of student leaders who were here today and gone tomorrow. Such an organization needed the continuity of a regular staff that adult-level institutions could provide.
By 1893, Illinois could boast of two major meets--Cook County League and University of Illinois meet--as well as various meets by parochial and private schools. Track and field had emerged as one of the principal sports along with baseball and football in the high schools.
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.