Nearly 100 years of history with the TSSAA

Mar 27, 2018 at 11:59 am by bryan


The TSSAA has been a part of local schools and prep sports for almost 100 years. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association was organized in 1925.

Matthew Gillespie in Murfreesboro commented on some of the changes over the years.

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The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association administers the junior and senior high school athletic program for an estimated 110,000 participants, 426 schools, an estimated 6,000 coaches, 5,000 officials, and almost 5,500 teams. Rutherford County Schools are part of those numbers.

TSSAA History (TSSAA.ORG):

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association is a voluntary, nonprofit, self-supported organization, conceived by school people (teachers, principals, superintendents) and administered by individuals carefully chosen to conduct the program.

TSSAA was organized in 1925. When the first state office was set up in 1946, the average daily attendance in all junior and senior high schools in Tennessee was only 85,000. Today's participation reaches almost 110,000.

The TSSAA is a leader in athletics in the United States. Tennessee was one of the first states to offer interscholastic athletics for girls. Tennessee high school girls' basketball goes back to the early 1920's.

The TSSAA was one of the first states to recognize and accept black athletes, the black high school program, and black officials. The TSSAA was one of a very few associations that integrated its program early and was not forced to do so under federal court order, as many states were.

The TSSAA program really began growing by leaps when classification of football was started back in 1969. Three classes were developed and each class advanced four teams into the play-off series. Teams that got to the play-offs did so by a point system. In 1969 the play-off attendance was 23,146.

By 1973 there was classification of basketball into two classes. Three classes of basketball came into being in 1976. Credit for initiating the state basketball tournament series goes to the late Blinkey Horn, sports editor of the Nashville Tennessean. The first boys' basketball tournament was held in 1921, and the first girls' cage tourney followed the next year. There was no boys' tournament from 1943 to 1946 because of the war. There was no girls' state from 1929 to 1957 for "financial reasons" and "the various types of rules" played at that time. The 1947 boys' tournament drew 6,132, and it grew to a record crowd of 44,582 in 1968. The girls' state has grown each year from 9,725 in 1958 to 25,874 in 1987. There are approximately 1,300 basketball games played each week during the cage season in Tennessee middle and senior high schools.

TSSAA sponsors football, girls' and boys' basketball, girls' and boys' track, girls' and boys' tennis, boys' and girls' wrestling, girls' volleyball, girls' and boys cross country, baseball, girls' softball, girls' and boys' soccer, girls' and boys' golf, and boys' and girls' bowling.

TSSAA has 426 high schools in its membership. There are 384 TMSAA member middle schools.

It was not until 1946 that the Association employed a full-time executive secretary and established a state office in Tennessee. The office moved to the Nashville area in 1970.

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