The Inter-Academic League (commonly known as the Inter-Ac) is an inter-scholastic athletic conference

Athletic conference

An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other at the professional, collegiate, or high school level. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller and smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels...

. The high school sports league consists of selective private school

Private school

Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...

s in the Philadelphia area and surrounding suburbs. The schools were organized into a conference early in 1887 when they came together as the Interacademic Athletic Association (the name was later shortened to its present configuration). Two initial sports offered by the league were football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 and track and field

Track and field

Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

. Early members were Germantown Academy

Germantown Academy

Germantown Academy is America's oldest nonsectarian day school, founded on December 6, 1759 . Germantown Academy is now a K-12 school in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, having moved from its original Germantown campus in 1965...

, Haverford Grammar, Penn Charter, De Lancey, Friends' Central School

Friends' Central School

Friends' Central School is a college-preparatory, Quaker, coeducational day school for nursery through grade 12 located in Wynnewood, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

, Swarthmore High School

Swarthmore High School

Swarthmore High School was a four-year public high school in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania serving the Boroughs of Swarthmore and Rutledge.Swarthmore established its own independent school district when Swarthmore Borough incorporated in 1893. The Swarthmore and Rutledge School Districts merged in 1955...

, and Episcopal Academy. In the first decade after the turn of the century the league featured a full calendar of sports, adding ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

, baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

, tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, and basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

.

Two of the league's members - William Penn Charter School

William Penn Charter School

William Penn Charter School is an independent school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1689 by William Penn...

 and Germantown Academy

Germantown Academy

Germantown Academy is America's oldest nonsectarian day school, founded on December 6, 1759 . Germantown Academy is now a K-12 school in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, having moved from its original Germantown campus in 1965...

 - share the nation's oldest continuous football rivalry, celebrated every year during GA/PC Day.

Member schools

Boys sports:

• Chestnut Hill Academy
  Chestnut Hill Academy
  Chestnut Hill Academy, commonly referred to as CHA, is a Pre-K to 12 all-male independent college preparatory school located in northwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
  
  
• Episcopal Academy
• Germantown Academy
  Germantown Academy
  Germantown Academy is America's oldest nonsectarian day school, founded on December 6, 1759 . Germantown Academy is now a K-12 school in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, having moved from its original Germantown campus in 1965...
  
  
• The Haverford School
  The Haverford School
  The Haverford School is a private, non-sectarian, all-boys college preparatory day school, junior kindergarten through grade twelve. Founded in 1884 as The Haverford College Grammar School, it is located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, nine miles northwest of Philadelphia, on Philadelphia's historic...
  
  
• Malvern Preparatory School
  Malvern Preparatory School
  Malvern Preparatory School, commonly referred to as Malvern Prep, is an independent Catholic middle and high school for boys located in Malvern, Pennsylvania. It was started and is still run by Order of Saint Augustine...
  
  
• William Penn Charter School
  William Penn Charter School
  William Penn Charter School is an independent school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1689 by William Penn...
  
  

Girls sports:

• The Agnes Irwin School
• The Baldwin School
  Baldwin School
  The Baldwin School is an all-girls private day school located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. The school, founded in 1888 by Florence Baldwin, consists of a Lower, Middle, and Upper School totaling approximately 600 in enrollment...
  
  
• Episcopal Academy
• Germantown Academy
  Germantown Academy
  Germantown Academy is America's oldest nonsectarian day school, founded on December 6, 1759 . Germantown Academy is now a K-12 school in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington, having moved from its original Germantown campus in 1965...
  
  
• The Academy of Notre Dame de Namur
  Academy of Notre Dame de Namur (Villanova, Pennsylvania)
  Academy of Notre Dame de Namur High School is a private Roman Catholic middle school and high school for girls in Villanova, Pennsylvania. It is located within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia; however, Notre Dame is an independent school....
  
  Category:High school sports conferences and leagues in the United States