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The Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA) was a high school sports league governing high school sports in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The MSA was established in 1919 and was initially led by Dr. Phillip H. Edwards, a former coach at and then-President of Baltimore City College. The league was established as a central coordinating entity to ensure fair competition and handle operational processes like scheduling games. The MSA was founded as two leagues of approximately six teams each "to allow the difference in strength among some of the teams." The winners from each league initially played to determine a city champion. Founding members of the MSA included Baltimore City College, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, The Donaldson School, Dunham's School, Friends School of Baltimore, Loyola Blakefield, Mount Saint Joseph High School, Park School of Baltimore, William S. Marston School. [1] Ultimately, MSA membership included public high schools from Baltimore City and surrounding counties, as well as Roman Catholic, other religious, and independent private schools.
The association was distinctive for its inclusive approach, uniting students from diverse economic, educational, and religious backgrounds. This inclusivity extended to racial integration in 1956, two years after the landmark "Brown vs. Board of Education" Supreme Court decision. The MSA integrated former "colored" schools in Baltimore City, such as Frederick Douglass High School and Paul Laurence Dunbar Community High School, into its ranks. [2] Unlike the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA) which classified schools based on student population, the MSA classified schools based on their athletic track record and tradition in individual sports, regardless of size. This system allowed schools with smaller student bodies but strong athletic programs to compete in higher conferences. [1]
The MSA was known for its high level of competition in various sports, with schools like City College, Polytechnic, and Edmondson High School excelling in football, and others like Mount St. Joseph's and Loyola achieving success in wrestling and swimming. Championships in the MSA were highly celebrated, with winners receiving polished mahogany plaques or framed certificates. A highlight of the MSA's sports calendar was the Thanksgiving Day double-header at Memorial Stadium, featuring the Calvert Hall-Loyola game and the City-Poly game. These events drew significant media attention and large crowds, reflecting the importance of high school sports in the Baltimore area at the time. [3]
The league was successful until 1992 when the Baltimore City public high schools withdrew from the MSA to join the MPSSAA for the opportunity to compete for state championships. [4] The league's private schools formed the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA).
The MSA board voted to dissolve the organisation in August 1993. [5]
Baltimore City College, known colloquially as City, City College, and B.C.C., is a college preparatory school with a liberal arts focus and selective admissions criteria located in Baltimore, Maryland. Opened in October 1839, B.C.C. is the third-oldest active public high school in the United States. City College is a public exam school and an International Baccalaureate World School at which students in the ninth and tenth grades participate in the IB Middle Years Programme while students in the eleventh and twelfth grades participate in the IB Diploma Programme.
The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, colloquially referred to as BPI, Poly, and The Institute, is a U.S. public high school founded in 1883. Established as an all-male manual trade / vocational school by the Baltimore City Council and the Baltimore City Public Schools, it is now a coeducational academic institution that emphasizes sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). It is located on a 53-acre (21 ha) tract of land in North Baltimore on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. BPI and the adjacent Western High School are located on the same campus.
Loyola Blakefield is a private Catholic, college preparatory school run by the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus in Towson, Maryland and within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It was established in 1852 by the Jesuits as an all-boys school for students from Baltimore, Baltimore County, Harford County, Carroll County, Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and Southern Pennsylvania. It enrolls over 900 students in grades six through twelve. The school was originally called Loyola High School when it was established in 1852. The name change occurred when it added a middle school.
Atholton High School is a high school in Columbia, Maryland, United States and is a part of the Howard County Public School System. The school hosts an Army JROTC program. The school mascot is the Raider.
St. Paul's School for Boys is an Episcopal, coed, private school located in Brooklandville, Maryland. It occupies a 120-acre (0.49 km2) rural campus in the Green Spring Valley Historic District, ten miles (16 km) north of the city of Baltimore in suburban Baltimore County.
The Baltimore Catholic League (BCL), locally known as the Catholic League is a competitive basketball association composed of private Catholic high schools in the Baltimore, Maryland geographic area.
The Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (M.I.A.A.) is a boys' sports conference for private high schools generally located in the Baltimore metropolitan area but extending to various other regions, including the state's mostly rural Eastern Shore. The M.I.A.A. has 27 member schools and offers competition in 17 sports. In most sports, it offers multiple levels of competition, including Varsity, Junior Varsity, and Freshmen-Sophomore teams, and the conference is broken down by separate leagues in each. In addition, members are sorted in accordance to continual performance; categories include 'A', 'B', or 'C' Conferences. Teams of the Association (League) may move up or down according to their performance spanning over the course of a year or so to maintain the competition at appropriate levels. Such levels vary for each sport; a school with a "B-Conference" lacrosse team can have an "A-Conference" soccer team: it all depends on the athletic performance of that particular sport.
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is a public high school in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
Patterson High School is a public high school located in the Hopkins-Bayview neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
The Cardinal Gibbons School, also referred to as Cardinal Gibbons, CG, and most commonly as Gibbons, was a Roman Catholic high school and middle school for boys in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. A private institution for grades 6–12, Gibbons drew its enrollment from the neighborhoods of southwest Baltimore City and the counties surrounding the Baltimore metropolitan area, with some as far away as Harford County, Carroll County, and Frederick County.
Notre Dame Preparatory School is a private, all-girls Roman Catholic, independent school in Towson, Maryland. It is located in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. Notre Dame Preparatory School is one of Baltimore's oldest Catholic, college preparatory schools for girls. Founded in 1873 by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a teaching order from Germany, Notre Dame Prep is located in Towson, Maryland, north of Baltimore City.
Dundalk High School (DHS) is a four-year public high school in the United States, located in Baltimore County, Maryland. The school opened in 1959. Starting in 2010, DHS was rebuilt and combined with Sollers Point Technical High School. The new building opened in 2013.
Maryland has a number of major and minor professional sports franchises. Two National Football League teams play in Maryland, the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore and the Washington Commanders in Prince George's County. The Baltimore Orioles compete as Major League Baseball franchise in Baltimore.
The Baltimore City College football team, known as the "Black Knights", or formerly "Castlemen", and "Alamedans", has represented Baltimore City College, popularly referred to as "City", the flagship public college preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, for nearly 150 years in the sport of gridiron football. Until 1953, the school's athletic teams were primarily referred to as the "Collegians", a moniker that is still used alternatively today. The team is the oldest high school football program in Maryland and is among the oldest high school football programs in the United States. The program was among the nation's best in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, finishing ranked in national high school football polls on multiple occasions.
The City–Poly football rivalry, also referred to as the "City-Poly Game" is an American football rivalry between the Baltimore City College Black Knights (City) and the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute Engineers (Poly). This matchup is the oldest football rivalry in Maryland. The rivalry is believed to be the second-oldest high school football rivalry in the United States between public high schools, predated only by the English High School of Boston-Boston Latin School football rivalry, which started two years earlier in 1887. The rivalry began in 1889 and the teams have met 134 times in history. City College leads the series 66-62-6.
Aloysius Carroll Galvin S.J. was an American Jesuit priest, administrator and teacher. He served as academic dean at Loyola College in Baltimore from 1959 to 1965. He was selected as the 17th president of the University of Scranton, which he led from 1965 until 1970. Galvin spent much of the rest of his career teaching mathematics at Georgetown Prep from 1970 until 2007. Nicknamed "Wish" by his family, friends and students, he was frequently voted a favorite teacher.
Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (MPSSAA) is the association that oversees public high school sporting contests in the state of Maryland. Organized after World War II in 1946, the MPSSAA is made up of public high schools from each of Maryland's 23 counties and independent city of Baltimore, which joined the association in 1993 when its public high schools withdrew from the earlier longtime athletic league, the Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA) which was founded in 1919. The MSA had been composed of public high schools in Baltimore and private/religious/independent schools on the secondary level in Baltimore and its metropolitan area and the surrounding central Maryland region. It was one of the few state-level interscholastic athletic leagues in the nation composed of both public and private/religious/independent secondary schools. After the Baltimore City public high schools withdrew from the MSA, the remaining private/religious/independent schools conferred and organized two parallel regional/state-wide athletic leagues with sports competition and exercise activities with one for young men and the other for young women. These were the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association and the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland, which still exist today. All three state-wide athletic leagues, two for private/religious/independent secondary schools and one for co-ed public high schools exist today marrying on the proud traditions, memories and championships of the old Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA)—one of the oldest state athletic leagues for secondary schools in the country.
Calvert Hall College High School is a Catholic college preparatory high school for boys, located in Towson, Maryland, United States. The school was established in 1845 by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools as a Catholic college preparatory high school for boys. It is the oldest Christian Brothers school in the United States.
The Baltimore City College boys' basketball team, known as the "Black Knights", or formerly, the "Castlemen", and "Alamedans", is the high school basketball team of Baltimore City College, popularly referred to as "City College", or simply "City". The school's athletic teams were primarily referred to as the "Collegians" prior to 1953, a moniker that is still used alternatively today. One of the earliest results recorded in program history is a one-point overtime road loss to the University of Maryland Terrapins on January 25, 1913. With a recorded history spanning more than 110 years, the program is one of the oldest high school basketball teams in the United States. From 1919 to 1992, the team competed as members of the Maryland Scholastic Association (MSA). During this period the team won thirteen MSA conference championships.
Interscholastic athletics at Baltimore City College date back over 120 years. Though varsity sports were not formally organized until 1895, interscholastic athletics became a fixture at the school earlier in the 19th century. In the late-1890s, City competed in the Maryland Intercollegiate Football Association (MIFA), a nine-member league consisting of colleges in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. City College was the lone secondary school among MIFA membership. The 1895 football schedule included St. John's College, Swarthmore College, the United States Naval Academy, University of Maryland, and Washington College. Between 1894 and 1920, City College regularly faced off against the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays and the Navy Midshipmen in lacrosse.