PSAL
Encyclopedia
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It was founded in 1903 to provide and maintain a sports program for students enrolled in New York City public schools. The PSAL serves both boys and girls. PSAL holds competitions in a wide range of indoor and outdoor sports in fall, winter and spring seasons. In 2007, the league included 185 schools involving nearly 2,400 teams.
The mission of the Public Schools Athletic league is to provide opportunities for educating students in physical fitness, character development and socialization skills through an athletic program that fosters teamwork, discipline and sportsmanship.
Early history
The genesis of the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) came from the appointment in early 1903 of Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick as director of physical training for the New York public school system. Compared to other major cities, the athletics program for the New York boroughs were backwards, underdeveloped, and rife with corruption. Gulick found "semi-truant" boys playing baseball for schools they did not attend, and that there was much unsportsmanlike conduct and dishonesty on the playing fields. Only a small percentage of actual students participated in athletics. He saw a serious need for reform and devised a grandiose plan to form a new league—the PSAL—that would involve most of the student population, grade school and high school, and working with two influential New Yorkers—General George W. Wingate (a member of the City Board of Education) and James E. Sullivan (secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union)--presented it in October 1903 to the superintendent of schools, William H. Maxwell. He, with the concurrence of the school board, approved of Gulick's plan.Although the PSAL received sanction by the board of education, it was set up as a private corporation that would not receive public tax money. The founders of the league recruited the businessmen of New York City to serve on the league's board of directors and also become paying members of the league, and also solicited contributions from prominent benefactors. The league was organized into 22 districts (expanded to 25 by 1910), in which each district league administered athletic programs for elementary and high schools within their district. One member of each district league served on the Elementary Games committee and one member of each district league served on the High School Games committee. These committees governed all general matters pertaining to the league. Championships were held at the district, borough, and city levels. By 1914, the Board of Education was fully funding the PSAL.
The league began with an athletic extravaganza held at Madison Square Garden on December 26, 1903. It involved 1,040 boys, mostly elementary school students, in basketball and track and field events. Among the high schools, Commerce won the track and field meet and Flushing won the basketball tournament. In the spring the league held its first outdoor high school track and field championship, won by Brooklun Boys.
Each year thereafter the high school league expanded by adding citywide championships in additional sports. In the school year of 1906-07 cross country and soccer was added, and the 1907-08 school year saw the addition of rifle marksmanship, swimming, tennis, and baseball. The expanded activity of the PSAL served to kill off all the previous leagues by 1908.
Rowing was added in the spring of 1907, and several schools, mainly Commerce and Clinton, competed each Memorial Day in the Harlem Regatta. The schools had difficulty getting the use of shells, however, and in 1915 the PSAL withdrew sponsorship. In the 1909-10, lacrosse was added and after World War I golf, handball, fall rifle marksmanship, and ice hockey were added.
Football was not a part of the league's program in its early years. The PSAL chose not sponsor football, because the intent of the league was to involve the average athlete in athletics, and football was considered a sport for athletic elites.The Long Island, Metropolitan, and various borough leagues continued to run the football championships for a couple or so years. In the fall of 1905 the New York newspapers began crowning schools with the titular "Greater New York" championship in football. This procedure lasted until about the fall of 1913, when the number of football contenders made it impossible to schedule sufficient games to decide on one champion. Thereafter the newspapers contented themselves with crowning borough champions. Finally, the PSAL began sponsoring football competition by boroughs in the fall of 1919, but no official championships were recognized. The newspapers basically crowned the borough champions in football.
The premier athletic powers in the league were spread over the boroughs and in the different sports. On Manhattan one of the premier powers was DeWitt Clinton, which took more than its share of trophies in the basketball, swimming, track and field, tennis, and football. Also in the borough were Stuyvesant, which rivaled Clinton in basketball, swimming, and track and field, and Commerce, which rivaled Clinton in basketball and football. Townsend Harris produced more than its share of swimming championships.
In Brooklyn, Manual Training succeeded Long Island League alumnus Brooklyn Boys' as the borough's power, taking loads of titles in track and field, cross country, lacrosse, and soccer. Another Long Island League alumnus, Erasmus Hall, emerged as a football and swimming power. In the 1920s New Utrecht became the premier power in track and field, taking most the indoor and outdoor titles that decade. The school continued to dominate the sport well into the 1930s.
Queens produced such powers as Jamaica (in ice hockey and rifle marksmanship), Richmond Hill (in golf), and Flushing (in cross country and track and field). The Bronx could boast of Morris, which dominated rifle marksmanship early on and took several national championships, and also did well in soccer and tennis. Evander Childs did well in golf, rifle, swimming, and tennis. On Staten Island (Richmond Borough), Curtis became a power in cross country, golf, and soccer.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s new athletic powers came to the forefront, such as Jefferson, Textile, Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School
Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech or just Tech, and also administratively as High School 430, is a New York City public high school that specializes in engineering, math and science and is the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and...
, Monroe, and Madison. Handball and fencing were added to the league program. The Great Depression of the 1930s cut somewhat into the PSAL program, and some sports were discontinued.
Some notable coaches in the PSAL are William Lopez, Jack Dammon, Dwayne "Tiny" Morton, Ruth Lovelace and Robert Sprance.
Sports programs
The following is a list of the sports that the PSAL currently runs under its programBoys
Fall Sports- BowlingBowlingBowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...
- Cross CountryCross country runningCross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...
- FencingFencingFencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
- FootballAmerican footballAmerican 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...
- Soccer
Winter Sports
- BasketballBasketballBasketball 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...
- GymnasticsGymnasticsGymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and balance. Internationally, all of the gymnastic sports are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique with each country having its own national governing body...
- Indoor Track
- SwimmingSwimming (sport)Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...
- WrestlingWrestlingWrestling is a form of grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. A wrestling bout is a physical competition, between two competitors or sparring partners, who attempt to gain and maintain a superior position...
Spring Sports
- BaseballBaseballBaseball 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...
- CrewCrewA crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard...
- GolfGolfGolf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
- HandballAmerican handballAmerican handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...
- LacrosseLacrosseLacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...
- Outdoor Track
- TennisTennisTennis 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...
- VolleyballVolleyballVolleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
- CricketCricketCricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
Girls
Fall Sports- BowlingBowlingBowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...
- Cross CountryCross country runningCross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...
- GolfGolfGolf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
- Soccer
- SwimmingSwimming (sport)Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...
- VolleyballVolleyballVolleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
Winter Sports
- BasketballBasketballBasketball 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...
- GymnasticsGymnasticsGymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and balance. Internationally, all of the gymnastic sports are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique with each country having its own national governing body...
- Indoor Track
Spring Sports
- CrewCrewA crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard...
- FencingFencingFencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
- HandballAmerican handballAmerican handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...
- LacrosseLacrosseLacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...
- Outdoor Track
- Football
- SoftballSoftballSoftball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...
- TennisTennisTennis 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...