History of Iowa High School Baseball The first IHSAA-sponsored baseball tournament was an 8-team affair held in 1928 in Ames. This tournament was played following a spring baseball season. In 1946, the IHSAA began sponsoring a summer tournament as well. The state continued to hold both a spring and a summer tournament through the 1971-72 school year. The next season, the spring tournament was dropped and the summer tournament expanded to two classes. Baseball has continued to be played in the summer, rather than the spring, since that time, making Iowa the only state in the county to play a summer baseball season. The summer tournament has had 4 classes since expanding to that number in 1981. Fall Baseball Alongside the spring and summer tournaments, the IHSAA also sponsored a fall baseball season and tournament. Baseball in the fall was not quite the same as in the spring or summer. The season was typically much shorter and competition usually included only small schools which did not sponsor football. In 1956 there were 485 schools playing fall baseball, but by 1985 only 28 schools continued playing in the fall. The numbers fell due to a number of factors. Many small schools closed or consolidated over the years (including many Catholic parish schools). Some schools opted for football rather than baseball (this was the case for fall baseball powerhouse Kee of Lansing, who after trying to field both football and fall baseball teams in 1980, ended up dropping fall baseball in 1981 in favor of their second year football program). The number of fall baseball teams was also diminished by a change in state policy in 1983 which allowed schools, for the first time, to partner with other schools for sports without requiring consolidation. In the years immediately following 1985, some schools continued to play fall baseball, without the opportunity to earn an IHSAA championship. This arrangement ended within a few years, as several more schools consolidated or closed in the late 1980s. Among the small schools that played fall baseball until the end were Norway and Bancroft St. John's, both of which had proved themselves the equal of the state's large school baseball powers by earning titles in the spring tournament against the likes of Mason City, Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson, and others. Consolidation continue to hit the former fall baseball schools hard. In 1985-86 Holy Cross Leo won the final fall baseball title by defeating Bancroft St. John's. Just four years later, both schools closed. Norway High School also closed its doors following the 1990-91 school year, inspiring the 2007 film "The Final Season". *Some scores missing from 1929 state tournament |
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