The Chicago Public High School Athletic Association, commonly known as the Chicago Public League (CPL), is the interscholastic competition arm of the
Chicago Public Schools
Chicago Public Schools (CPS), officially classified as City of Chicago School District #299 for funding and districting reasons, in Chicago, Illinois, is the third-largest school district in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles.
...
. The governance of the CPL is set through the Department of Sports Administration and Facilities of CPS.
Members
History
Origins of the Chicago Public League can be traced back to its predecessor, the
Cook County High School League, which started during 1889-90. Some of the schools that participated in the Cook County League still exist today:
Crane (as English High and Manual Training),
Englewood,
Lincoln Park (as North Division),
Hyde Park
Hyde Park may refer to:
Places
England
* Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London
* Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds
* Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield
* Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester
Austra ...
,
Phillips (as South Division),
Calumet
Calumet may refer to:
Places United States
*Calumet Region, in northern Illinois and Indiana
**Calumet River
**Calumet Trail, Indiana
** Calumet (East Chicago)
* Calumet, Colorado
*Calumet, Iowa
* Calumet, Michigan
*Calumet, Minnesota
* Calumet ...
,
Marshall
Marshall may refer to:
Places
Australia
* Marshall, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria
Canada
* Marshall, Saskatchewan
* The Marshall, a mountain in British Columbia
Liberia
* Marshall, Liberia
Marshall Islands
* Marshall Islands, an i ...
,
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
, Lake (now
Tilden), and
Lake View. Three other schools from this League have since gone to other leagues around the area: University High, which plays in the Independent League, Lyons Township High of LaGrange and Oak Park High, both of which now play in the
West Suburban Conference
The West Suburban Conference is an athletic conference in DuPage County and Cook County in the state of Illinois.
The conference was founded in 1924.
Member schools
All of the schools are also members of the Illinois High School Association (IHSA ...
.
The Chicago Public High School League was formed in the summer of 1913, when the Cook County High School League broke apart as a result of the
Chicago Board of Education
The Chicago Board of Education serves as the board of education (school board) for the Chicago Public Schools.
The board traces its origins to the Board of School Inspectors, created in 1837.
The board is currently appointed solely by the mayor ...
's desire to be responsible for a league in which all the schools would be under its jurisdiction. The suburban schools joined by University High formed the
Suburban League (Chicago area).
In the first 15 years of the Public league's history a full plethora of sports were offered. The dominant powers were such traditional powers as Hyde Park, Lane Tech, Crane Tech, Englewood, joined by new powers
Senn
Senn is a term for the chief herdsman tending an Alp.
As a surname:
* Alfred E. Senn (born 1932), professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
* Bill Senn (1905–1973), professional American football running back in the ...
, Lindblom,
Schurz, and Tilden Tech. The mid-1920s saw the adoption of such exotic sports as
gymnastics
Gymnastics is a type of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, dedication and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shou ...
,
rifle
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...
marksmanship
A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting using projectile weapons (in modern days most commonly an accurized scoped long gun such as designated marksman rifle or a sniper rifle) to shoot at high-value targets at longer-than- ...
,
fencing
Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, s ...
,
indoor golf
Indoor golf is an umbrella term for all activities in golf which can be carried out indoors. Venues include indoor driving ranges, chipping areas, putting greens, machines and home golf simulators. Many of these indoor facilities are businesses t ...
, and
speed skating
Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors racing, race each other in travelling a certain distance on Ice skate, skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marath ...
, but none of these sports ever attracted more than a small percentage of the schools.
During the 1920s, the Chicago Public League, which had unofficially abided by the Illinois High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) ban on all girls interscholastic contests, began to relax its strictures against interscholastic sports for girls. The league in 1922 began sponsoring tennis, golf, and swimming competition, and became lax in its ban on the other sports, so that the girls began interschool competition in basketball, volleyball, and softball. However, when the CPL schools began joining the IHSAA in 1926 (so as to participate in the state golf, tennis, and track and field contests, in which the IHSAA that year assumed joint sponsorship with the University of Illinois) the league then ended its sponsorship of girls' golf, tennis, and swimming, and cracked down on girls' interscholastic contests in the other sports. The CPL did not return to girls' interscholastics until the early 1970s, with the passage of
Title IX
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
by the federal government in 1972.
Beginning with the
Great Migration coming in the 1920s, a number of schools became predominantly African American, notably Phillips (started as South Division),
DuSable (started as New Phillips),
Dunbar
Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and gave its name to an ecc ...
, Forrestville (now King), Carver; and later into the second half of the 20th century with
Julian,
Simeon
Simeon () is a given name, from the Hebrew (Biblical ''Šimʿon'', Tiberian ''Šimʿôn''), usually transliterated as Shimon. In Greek it is written Συμεών, hence the Latinized spelling Symeon.
Meaning
The name is derived from Simeon, son ...
,
Curie
In computing, a CURIE (or ''Compact URI'') defines a generic, abbreviated syntax for expressing Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). It is an abbreviated URI expressed in a compact syntax, and may be found in both XML and non-XML grammars. A CURIE ...
,
Orr, and
Kennedy
Kennedy may refer to:
People
* John F. Kennedy (1917–1963), 35th president of the United States
* John Kennedy (Louisiana politician), (born 1951), US Senator from Louisiana
* Kennedy (surname), a family name (including a list of persons with t ...
.
The advent of
charter school
A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of auto ...
s in the late 1990s and early 2000s yet saw another expansion of the league as schools such as CICS,
Noble Network of Charter Schools
Noble Schools, (formerly known as the Noble Network of Charter Schools and as Noble Street Charter School) is an open enrollment, public charter network of high schools and middle schools serving students throughout Chicago. Noble was co-founded ...
, and
ACE Technical Charter High School were included. The CPL as it stands today is very diverse with nearly every major nationality and race represented in all sports.
Administration
The CPL is headed by the Director of Sports Administration and Facilities of the Chicago Public Schools. Calvin Davis currently holds this position. Davis, who has 25 years of teaching, coaching, and administrative experience in the Chicago Public Schools took over in 2003 after being selected by CEO Arne Duncan to replace Dr. J.W. Smith who retired that year. Under the Director are the City Wide Sport Coordinators, who govern competition in the sports that they are assigned. Some coordinators handle multiple sports: one example is
Mickey Pruitt
Mickey Pruitt (born January 10, 1965) is a former American football linebacker in the National Football League for the Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys, winning a Super Bowl ring with the Cowboys in Super Bowl XXVII over the Buffalo Bills.
Ea ...
, a graduate of Robeson and former member of the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...
. Pruitt currently governs competition in football, wrestling and lacrosse.
David Rosengard currently serves as the Executive Director of Sports Administration for Chicago Public Schools.
Basic playing levels
Nearly every sport has four playing levels: Varsity, Sophomore, Freshman and Elementary. Incoming freshmen can 'play-up' to either sophomore or varsity levels; the same with sophomores for the varsity. The elementary school sports program which offers 17 sports for girls and boys in grades five through eight for 500 schools was developed in the late 1990s by the league as a way to close the athletic gap between the CPL and its parochial counterpart, the
Chicago Catholic League
The Chicago Catholic League (CCL) is a high school athletic conference based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. All of the schools are part of the Illinois High School Association, the governing body for Illinois scholastic sports. While some o ...
/
Girls Catholic Athletic Conference. Today, coaches in the high school sector of the CPL actively recruit the elementary division to fill their ranks, as opposed to earlier years where most kids came into the high school athletic arena with little or no experience.
"The Shield"
The championship trophy of the CPL is noted by "The Shield". A school holding one of these trophies is recognized as having beaten a very large field of competitors for the city title. Until 2004, the trophy was made of wood with either a gold or silver plate notating champion or runner-up finish. Since 2004, it is now made of black marble with gold trimming and plated with a silver sculpture of the sport the trophy was earned in. Between 1972 and 2002, the holder of The Shield gained automatic entry into the Illinois State Finals in most sports (except football). Since then, the city championship has been decided prior to the start of the state tournament.
Another reason schools play for The Shield is the venues that they play in. Every year The Shield is contested in a number of professional or major college stadiums. Over the years they have included Soldier Field, the UIC Pavilion,
United Center
United Center is an indoor arena on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is home to the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL). It is named ...
,
International Amphitheater
The International Amphitheatre was an indoor arena located in Chicago, Illinois, that opened in 1934 and was demolished in 1999. It was located on the west side of Halsted Street, at 42nd Street, on the city's south side, in the Canaryville nei ...
,
Chicago Coliseum
Chicago Coliseum was the name applied to three large indoor arenas in Chicago, Illinois, which stood successively from the 1860s to 1982; they served as venues for sports events, large (national-class) conventions and as exhibition halls. The f ...
,
Chicago Stadium
Chicago Stadium was an indoor arena in Chicago, Illinois, that opened in 1929, closed in 1994 and was demolished in 1995. It was the home of the National Hockey League's Chicago Blackhawks and the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls.
...
, Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park-US Cellular Field,
Loyola University Chicago
Loyola University Chicago (Loyola or LUC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Cathol ...
,
Chicago State University
Chicago State University (CSU) is a predominantly black public university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1867 as the Cook County Normal School, it was an innovative teachers college. Eventually the Chicago Public Schools assumed control of t ...
,
Northeastern Illinois University
Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) is a public university in Chicago, Illinois. NEIU serves approximately 9,000 students in the region and is a Hispanic-serving institution. The main campus is located in the community area of North Park wi ...
, and
DePaul University
DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-centu ...
.
Athletic divisions
With the exception of soccer, football, girls basketball and baseball, each sport in the CPL has two distinct playing divisions: Red and Blue. The Red division is considered the highest level of competition citywide, while the Blue features programs just starting or not quite as talented. In soccer, there are 4 divisions: Premier, 1st Division, 2nd Division, and 3rd Division respectively. In football, there are three divisions: the Illini (Red) Conference, the Chicago (Blue) Conference and the Intra-City (Green) Conference. In baseball, various divisions are notated by the names of famous
major league baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
players, with the highest competition division being the
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line ...
conference. In girls' basketball, there are three divisions: Red, Blue, and Green.
Football
CPL sanctioning of football dates back to 1913. As early as 1927, the CPL football champion met the
CCL champion at
Soldier Field
Soldier Field is a multi-purpose stadium on the Near South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Opened in 1924 and reconstructed in 2003, the stadium has served as the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) since 1 ...
for the city title. The game would be later dubbed the Prep Bowl in 1934 by Mayor Edward Kelly as a Thanksgiving fundraiser for the city's poor. Until the advent of the Illinois state playoffs in 1974, the Prep Bowl was the main attraction of the fall season, attracting crowds in upwards of 100,000 in its heyday and averaging close to 65,000. Since 1974, crowds have dramatically dwindled with the emphasis switching to earning a state championship. Renovation of Soldier Field in 2003 has seen a steady resurgence in crowds for the game, averaging around 20-25,000.
Success in the state playoffs for the Public League has been fleeting at times, but since elementary football came on board in the late 1990s, the league has seen considerable progress in competing with outside competition. Between 1979 - when the League first gained entry into the state playoffs - and 1983, at least one Chicago Public school earned a state semifinal berth, with Robeson making it all the way to the Class 6A championship in 1982 before losing to (Rockford) Guilford. Since 1983, only three schools have made it to the state semifinals:
Morgan Park (2005),
Hubbard Hubbard may refer to:
Places Canada
*Hubbard, Saskatchewan
*Hubbards, Nova Scotia
Canada/United States
* Mount Hubbard, a mountain on the Alaska/Yukon border
*Hubbard Glacier, a large freshwater glacier in Alaska and Yukon
Greenland
*Hubbard Gla ...
(2000, 2006) and
Simeon
Simeon () is a given name, from the Hebrew (Biblical ''Šimʿon'', Tiberian ''Šimʿôn''), usually transliterated as Shimon. In Greek it is written Συμεών, hence the Latinized spelling Symeon.
Meaning
The name is derived from Simeon, son ...
(2014). On November 27, 2015, Phillips became the first Chicago Public school to win an Illinois state title with a 51-7 win over Belleville Althoff to win the Class 4A state championship.
On the city level, football has been long dominated by schools south of Madison Avenue, but north side powers like Lane and Schurz have also hoisted The Shield as league titleholders. As of the end of the 2006 season,
Chicago Vocational holds the record for most football city titles with nine, with Lane and Julian tied for second with eight. In addition, the advent of the Chicago Conference Championship game in 2004 has given the second division an opportunity to earn at least one piece of hardware before being seeded into the Prep Bowl tournament. The Intra-City Conference championship is the only title that that division can attain, having no opportunity to vie for the Varsity or State championships.
As recent as 2009, due to the explosion of new high schools in the league, changes in state qualification have now allowed the division champions in the Chicago Conference to also participate in the state tournament, which means at least eight CPS programs will battle in the Downstate Dance. The Intra-City Conference still cannot vie for either a state or city title.
Basketball
CPL sanctioning of basketball dates back to 1913, when the CPL was formed. The CPL didn't play for a state championship until the 1926-27 school year, when it first gained entry into the IHSA. The basketball ranks have enjoyed the most success at the state tournament of any sport sanctioned by CPS. The first state title for CPL basketball came in 1958 with
Marshall
Marshall may refer to:
Places
Australia
* Marshall, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria
Canada
* Marshall, Saskatchewan
* The Marshall, a mountain in British Columbia
Liberia
* Marshall, Liberia
Marshall Islands
* Marshall Islands, an i ...
, four years after
Du Sable earned the league's first ever state championship berth. Beginning in 2010
Simeon
Simeon () is a given name, from the Hebrew (Biblical ''Šimʿon'', Tiberian ''Šimʿôn''), usually transliterated as Shimon. In Greek it is written Συμεών, hence the Latinized spelling Symeon.
Meaning
The name is derived from Simeon, son ...
won the state championship four times in a row. CPL schools have enjoyed the top of the podium 22 times, 14 of those on the boys side. Eight of the ten girls' titles also belong to Marshall, thanks to the state's all-time winningest coach in the sport,
Dorothy Gaters, who at last count was near 830 wins for her career after winning the state championship in class 3A in 2008 along with the
Whitney Young
Whitney Moore Young Jr. (July 31, 1921 – March 11, 1971) was an American civil rights leader. Trained as a social worker, he spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban ...
girls team who won the class 4A state title in the first year of the class expansion from 2 classes to 4.
Among the stadiums used to stage the city championship were the Chicago Coliseum, International Amphitheater, the UIC Pavilion, and recently the United Center. When the boys championship was contested for the first time at the United Center in 2000, the league set a new state attendance record in basketball as 20,002 patrons watched
Westinghouse earn the crown against Whitney Young. To date, every championship game that was held at the United Center earned more fans than the present state championship sites of Carver Arena in Peoria and Redbird Arena in Bloomington combined. As of the 2010-11 school year, the Jones Convocation Center at
Chicago State University
Chicago State University (CSU) is a predominantly black public university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1867 as the Cook County Normal School, it was an innovative teachers college. Eventually the Chicago Public Schools assumed control of t ...
is the current host of the CPS basketball title games.
The most city basketball championships for boys is a dead heat as
Crane and Marshall each have 11 Shields. There's no question who is the top team in the girls' ranks: Marshall, with 23 championships - the most by a single sports team (boys or girls) in league history.
Baseball
CPL sanctioning of baseball goes back to the spring of 1914, and it entered the state tournament when that was formed in 1940. The league has had its share of state titles, with
Lane
In road transport, a lane is part of a roadway that is designated to be used by a single line of vehicles to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads (highways) have at least two lanes, one for traffic in each ...
,
Fenger,
Schurz and
Hubbard Hubbard may refer to:
Places Canada
*Hubbard, Saskatchewan
*Hubbards, Nova Scotia
Canada/United States
* Mount Hubbard, a mountain on the Alaska/Yukon border
*Hubbard Glacier, a large freshwater glacier in Alaska and Yukon
Greenland
*Hubbard Gla ...
taking their place atop the podium. The last state title earned by the CPL was 1973 (Hubbard); since then, the closest the league has come to a state championship was Simeon's 4th-place finish in 1998.
A tradition that has been a staple of the CPL baseball ranks has been the city title game played in either of the major league stadiums,
Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field is a Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is the home of the Chicago Cubs, one of the city's two MLB franchises. It first opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park for Charles Weeghman's Chicago Wh ...
or
Guaranteed Rate Field (formerly
Comiskey Park
Comiskey Park was a baseball park in Chicago, Illinois, located in the
Armour Square neighborhood on the near-southwest side of the city. The stadium served as the home of the Chicago White Sox of the American League from 1910 through 1990. Buil ...
).
Lane Tech
Lane Tech College Prep High School (often shortened to Lane Tech, full name Albert Grannis Lane Technical College Preparatory High School), is a public 4-year selective enrollment magnet high school located in the Roscoe Village neighborhood on ...
has the most city titles in the sport of any school, having won its 24th title in 2022. It is the most titles for any sports team in league history.
Other sports
Between 1972 and 2002, the CPL had enjoyed status as sending its city champion to the Illinois State Finals in numerous other sports, including soccer, wrestling and softball. Prior to 1972, the Lane boys' swim team enjoyed nine state titles in the 1930s and 1940s, the earliest domination of any sport by any CPL team. Jones College Prep in 2012 and Lane in 1963 earned the only state cross country titles; Englewood earned runner-up status in 1955. Harrison earned the city's first boys' state soccer title in 1973 and Schurz finished second in 1977; Lake View finished fourth in 2008. Mather ended the city's state championship drought by winning the title in the fall of 2011.
Parker and Senn earned boys' state tennis titles during the 1930s and 1940s.
Walter Payton
Walter Jerry Payton (July 25, 1953Although most sources at the time of his death gave Payton's birth year as 1954, reliable sources subsequently state he was born in 1953. – November 1, 1999) was an American football running back who played ...
Girls Volleyball finished fourth in state in 2008.
State track and field titles have come in bunches for the CPL. The earliest known state track championship for a Chicago school dates to 1895 with Englewood. Since then, Hyde Park, Phillips, Lane, Senn, Tilden, Harlan, South Shore, and Morgan Park have earned the gold medal at the state championships.
Also, Tilden earned a pair of state wrestling titles for the city in 1946 and 1952.
Most recently, CPS wrestling has gained notoriety with Bowen racking up regional titles. The last individual state champions have been Travis Hammons of Hubbard (2005) and Max Schneider of Lane Tech (2009, 2012).
[ ]
Sports Apparel
There are many websites and other sources to get school apparel. Going to the school directly or if some schools offer it the school webpage, is one source to get school or team apparel. However, an unofficial online source is th
CPS fan store
References
Sources
Illinois High School Association homepagePrep Bowl.com homepage
{{Chicago
Articles containing video clips
High school sports conferences and leagues in the United States
Illinois high school sports conferences
Sports competitions in Chicago
Chicago Public Schools
1913 establishments in Illinois