The Philadelphia Public League (PPL) is the interscholastic sports league for the public high schools of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. The league traces its origin to 1901, with the formation of the Philadelphia Interscholastic League, a conference encompassing all the city's high schools, public and private. Prior to this, the public and private schools in the area had been competing among themselves for several years in a number of sports, including football and basketball. Basketball and track and field were the first recognized sports in 1901, but football, although not formally on the schedule, engaged all the same teams, and newspapers usually recognized the school with the best record as the informal interscholastic champion. In 1902, baseball and crew were added to the schedule.

History

Initially, the Public League comprised the four public schools that withdrew from the Interscholastic League—

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, Central Manual,

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, and Southern—as well as West Philadelphia High.

Germantown Academy Germantown Academy, informally known as GA and originally known as the Union School, is the oldest nonsectarian day school in the United States. The school was founded on December 6, 1759, by a group of prominent Germantown citizens in the Gree ...

, a private school, joined a few years later. Overbrook, Frankford, Simon Gratz, Olney, and Roxborough would join the league over the next couple of decades. Football, basketball, rifle, outdoor track, crew, and baseball were offered in the first school year of competition, 1911–12. Crew was especially popular in Philadelphia, as the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

sponsored interscholastic meets for the sport and encouraged its adoption by the city high schools. Soccer and cross country were added just before World War I, and the 1920s saw the introduction of swimming, gymnastics, golf, and tennis. The league experimented with indoor track (1915–21), ice hockey (1922), and bowling (1930–32), but these sports drew insufficient interest to sustain them. Crew was dropped by the league in 1919, which was a great blow to Central High, which for decades had one of the strongest rowing programs in the country.

Members

The early members in the Philadelphia Interscholastic League included Brown Preparatory School, Camden High School, Central High School, Central Manual Training School,

Drexel Institute Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...

, Eastburn Academy,

Friends' Central School Friends' Central School (FCS) is a Quaker school which educates students from nursery through grade 12. It is located in Wynnewood, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania in Greater Philadelphia. The school was founded in 1845 in P ...

, and

, and beginning in 1909 Southern High School. At least twelve different private schools—secular, Quaker, and Catholic— were members, the most notable being Brown Preparatory,

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, Friends Central Select, and LaSalle. In 1911, the public school members withdrew from the league to form the Philadelphia High School League.

References

{{Reflist

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20090818144924/http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=philahighschools Sports in Philadelphia Pennsylvania high school sports conferences

History

Members

See also

References

External links