The Rise of American High School Sports and the Search for Control, 1880–1930 by Robert Prouter (review)

[Erratum]

Robert Prouter’s new book offers scholars a much-needed organizational history of high school athletics in the United States during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prouter’s basic narrative is cut into three distinct eras. The first era, which encompasses the years 1880 to 1900, addresses the impromptu, student-run athletic programs that first emerged in the elite private schools of the Northeast. Prouter contends that although administrators at these schools approved these types of activities, officiating, facilities, and sponsorship were often provided by adult authorities outside the schools—most notably universities and private athletic clubs.

Prouter then discusses the rise of athletic programs in public high schools between 1900 and 1920, paying special attention to how educators began to assume greater control over interscholastic sports due to fears of rowdyism, allegations of fraud, and a general belief that too great an emphasis on athletics was devaluing the overall educational experience. This was the era in which high school athletics were re-organized at the school level, the league level, and the state level. Universities and private athletics clubs still played a significant role in interscholastic sports during this period, but their influence was slowly being eroded as World War I neared.

The final section of the book examines the emergence of high school athletics as a truly national phenomenon between 1920 and 1930. Prouter claims that the control and governance of interscholastic sports during the years leading up to the Great Depression were taken over by the National Federation of State High School Athletics Association, which effectively ended sponsorship from universities and private athletic clubs.

Prouter does an excellent job explaining how the organization of high school athletics was transformed between 1880 and 1930, while also discussing the extent to which class, race, and gender greatly affected this process. Nonetheless, Prouter’s work is problematic in at least two respects. For starters, his analysis dwells much too heavily on the Northeast and the Midwest, with particular emphasis on New York, Boston, and Chicago. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem had Prouter positioned his research as a regional or sectional study rather than a national study, but without providing more analysis of athletic programs in, say, the Deep South or the Southwest, Prouter, in effect, leaves himself open to criticism.

Similarly, Prouter’s perspective is muddied by the fact that students, the very people who were subjected to greater institutional control during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, do not have much of a voice in his work. Educators, media representatives, and business leaders are given their due, but one would be hard-pressed to understand how students responded to many of the sweeping changes that were enacted.

Despite these concerns, Prouter’s book represents an excellent contribution to the study of high school athletics, offering intriguing arguments that will be of interest to a wide academic audience.