Creative Thinking, New Opportunities Fuel Iowa’s Push for Activity Participants

In Iowa, where a goal for inclusivity exists to grow and challenge students, a unique governing structure has united the state’s high school activities for decades.

Through the collaborative efforts of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU), the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), the Iowa High School Speech Association (IHSSA) and the Iowa High School Music Association (IHSMA), students continue to receive increased participation opportunities. Iowa was among a few states where girls participation in high school basketball was allowed as early as the 1920s. Although it thrived in rural areas, those in more densely populated towns had concerns over girls engaging in activities as “strenuous” as basketball.

“It was okay for girls in Iowa to play basketball and other sports because as a largely agricultural state, growing up on a farm like I did, the girls do everything the boys do,” said Jean Berger, IGHSAU executive director. “Girls bale hay, butcher, herd cattle and milk cows. There isn’t anything done on a farm that a girl doesn’t do but a boy does. Parents never said, ‘my girl can’t do that.’

Girls were already doing everything else.”

The debate over girls participation opportunities spewed over at the 1925 Iowa State Teachers’ Convention in Des Moines. The annual meeting of superintendents and principals concluded with the decision that only boys could play competitive sports before paying crowds. In the wake of a rebuttal by Mystic Superintendent John W. Agans, a group of 25 men from mostly small rural school districts met and reached the conclusion that they must form their own organization for girls sports.

With the IGHSAU firmly established and overseeing girls activities, the ongoing management of those for boys has been conducted by the IHSAA, which is the state’s NFHS member association. The state’s other two ruling authorities – the IHSMA and IHSSA – have oversight of their own activities, despite residing in locations shared by the IHSAA and IGHSAU, respectively. In doing so, the four organizations collectively reduce costs associated with operating programs.

Craig Ihnen, who serves as both IHSSA executive director and IGHSAU senior associate director, pointed out that the students ultimately benefit from the collaboration between each activity organization’s leadership.

“When the four executive directors get together, no one organization is more important than the other,” Ihnen said. “We all listen to each other. When we have the possibility of two events happening on the same day, we look to see how we make it work for each of our students.”

In demonstrating the group’s collaborative ways, Ihnen alluded to an upcoming district speech contest in which accommodations are being made to allow students involved with both music and speech to make it to their district speech and show choir contests.

In athletics, the same practices are on display.

“We also have the same scenario happening with state wrestling, where we have cheerleaders there for our wrestlers in the morning but in the afternoon need to be at our all-state speech festival,” Ihnen said. “We communicate and do things that way for the multi-activity students. The IHSAA and IGHSAU won’t start the regional basketball games until later in the evening, until speech is done. Some people would like those in the afternoon, but they won’t do that because they know that’s a speech day. And we need to keep that open.”

The number of performing arts participants in Iowa is among the highest in the nation. According to the most recent activity participation data collected by the NFHS, Iowa boasts the nation’s third-most participants in band (46,347) and theatre (26,250), and the most in group interpretation (24,650) and vocal (42,726) activities.

Iowa, like most states, classifies by enrollment. The state’s smallest member high school has just under 20 students while its largest is estimated to have more than 2,000 students. Whether small or large, there is a constant struggle to share participants across activities.

“If you have a young female who wants to play basketball and volleyball or track and softball in the same season, you’ve got to work together to let that girl do that,” Berger said. “While I think that has historically taken place in athletics, there’s now a growth in the number of club programs and opportunities available to students outside of school. If you don’t work together as we are doing, and you don’t stop forcing kids to choose what activities they’re in, they will go somewhere else.”

Berger added that the same situations can arise in activities, where students may find themselves having to choose between a sport such as girls basketball or participate in speech.

“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to say they’d pick basketball,” Berger said. “We don’t want that. We want them participating in as much as they can. There are people out there who have lost sight of the ability to work together for the benefit of the student because they’re so in tune with the idea that they must do things a certain way to be the best and to get a scholarship. That’s just not serving our students very well. I think the fact that we have four organizations forces us to look at it and work together to protect the opportunities of a student who wants to do everything.”

“At our all-state speech festival two years ago, we had a student perform in a mime group and then travel to the state swim meet where they won a state championship – all in the same day,” Ihnen added. Some of the best basketball players in the state are some of our top performers in music and speech. There is a lot of crossover.”

In 2016, a study funded by the NFHS Foundation revealed high school sport specialization is likely to result in increased injuries. Although a resounding 94.4 percent of coaches believed multisport participation increased a student’s athletic ability, 68 percent of student-athletes believed specializing in one activity increased the likelihood they could make a college team and 82 percent believed they needed to specialize to make their high school team.

Berger and Ihnen addressed the topic of multi-activity participation during a workshop presentation at the 2021 NFHS Summer Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The underlying message of their presentation was that students must have fun. They can also take advantage of improving existing skills, learning new skills, tackling new challenges, learning values associated with being on a team, and much more.

“Even from a student perspective, they know that belonging on a team – especially one such as speech – would be good for them because they would learn something,” Berger said. “That’s not going to cut it for why they choose to participate. If you say eat this broccoli because it’s good for you, they’re going to give it to the dog. They know it’s good for them, but they still are not going to eat it. You have to put some cheese on the broccoli. As Craig does with speech, and really all four organizations strive to do, is make our activities and events fun and special for students. If you put a little cheese on it, you get the benefit of all that participation.”

Ihnen noted that the IHSSA and IGHSAU have both worked to create incredible environments for students in recent years, such as boys and girls basketball and wrestling state tournaments, and the all-state music and speech festivals.

“When it comes to girls basketball and volleyball, Jean has created this incredible environment for the IGHSAU state tournaments, featuring a pink carpet that students walk along to get into the arena,” Ihnen said. “The minute you hit the arena, you’re in the environment. And environment is so important. And even in the speech and music contests, we’re trying to create environments that students feel really good about. When you create an environment, they want to come back to have that taste again.”

By operating music and speech contests in a festival format, students have the added advantage of not having to compete toward a single championship in those environments, according to Ihnen. Such formats provide students with critique and a potential top rating that can ultimately “foster a really good feeling” while offering an educational opportunity.

“There’s a big difference between festival and championship format when it comes to getting students excited,” Ihnen said. “For marching band, there’s not a single champion that walks away after a full day of competition. There are several teams participating to earn the top rating of the day. So, you’re then not worried about who’s best, but rather you’re worried about how you can improve the group. I think that really makes a difference for kids in crossing over into activities.”

In their continued push for new opportunities, Berger and Ihnen point to the rules present across the landscape of athletics and activities as an area where opportunity for new participants could emerge.

What’s missing? What could make an activity more attractive to students? How can we change? These questions are all posed as part of the process, according to Ihnen, who also serves as IGHSAU director of tennis.

Last year, with girls having trouble under the traditional scoring method used for qualifying day, Ihnen and his cohorts adopted a change that promoted a more inclusive day.

On the activity side, Ihnen and the IHSSA made Iowa the first state to adopt short film after recognizing the global popularity of the social media video platform TikTok.

“Looking back on the history of state high school associations, our rules are largely the same across the whole country because we want to be fair and equitable. We want a level playing field,” Berger said. “In the real world, the playing field isn’t level for all students. If you live in rural Iowa – a long way from any club program – your ability to get better outside of your season is different than if you live in Des Moines. We’ve reached the age where I’m not sure one size fits all in terms of our offerings. I’m not sure we can be everything to everybody anymore.”

When sanctioning a new sport, as the IGHSAU voted to do unanimously for girls wrestling in January, 50 schools or 15 percent of its membership must offer it. While the state’s larger cities can help accommodate such limits due to each girl counting toward the percentage, a sport like lacrosse is not as easily sanctioned, Berger said.

“Lacrosse is getting better and bigger with more boys and girls in competing. We’re probably never going to get to 50 schools because we just aren’t that big of a state,” Berger said. “Maybe we ought to think about not requiring 50 schools to have a program to sanction it. Maybe we look at the number of students participating in an offering. There may be 30 schools in Iowa that could offer lacrosse to just as many students as 50 schools do for another activity. Schools are under a lot of stress now, so I think we need to think about the way we’ve always done things and be willing to try new things to help students.”