Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association
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| Abbreviation | TSSAA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1925 |
| Type | Volunteer; NPO |
| Legal status | Association |
| Purpose | Athletic/Educational |
| Headquarters | 3333 Lebanon Rd. Hermitage, TN 37076 |
Region served | Tennessee |
Membership | 374 schools |
Official language | English |
Executive Director | Bernard Childress |
| Affiliations | National Federation of State High School Associations |
Budget | $1,200,000+ |
| Website | tssaa.org |
| Remarks | (615) 889-6740 |
The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) is an organization which administers junior and senior high sporting events for an estimated 110,000 participants, 374 schools, 4,000 coaches, 3,000 officials, and 5,500 teams in the American state of Tennessee. First organized in 1925, the TSSAA oversees athletic functions of both public and private schools. It includes schools throughout the state of Tennessee, as well as a single private school located in Mississippi.Template:Fn
History
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. The 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 100,000.
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. Furthermore, 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. Today, 160 teams advance to a five classification play-off series — 32 in each class. Last year the football play-off attendance reached 290,000.
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 junior and senior high schools.
TSSAA sponsors football, girls' and boys' basketball, girls' and boys' track, girls' and boys' tennis, wrestling, girls' volleyball, girls' and boys cross country, baseball, girls' softball, girls' and boys' soccer, and girls' and boys' golf.
It was not until 1946 that the Association employed a full-time executive secretary and established a state office in Trenton, Tennessee. The office moved to the Nashville area in 1970.
Notes
- Template:FnbThe only exception is Fort Campbell High School on the Tennessee side of the eponymous U.S. Army base. The base straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border, and the school is administered by the same Department of Defense district as the high school at Fort Knox in Kentucky. Fort Campbell High is therefore a member of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association. Southern Baptist Educational Center, located a short distance across the Mississippi state line, is a TSSAA member under a rule provision permitting TSSAA membership for a school that relocated from Tennessee to another state, if the majority of the students at such school are Tennessee residents.
References
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