IESA Headlines

Let's Get Started . . . Again!

Welcome Back!

For the 77th straight year, the Illinois Elementary School Association (IESA) continues to be out front in providing opportunities of learning, growth and recognition to the nearly 140,000 students who attend our 720 member schools.

The Association is as strong as its members make it. We are the only one of its kind in America. We will continue to tell our story throughout the state and will encourage schools across Illinois to share the interscholastic experience. At this same time last year we had 683 member schools. We've grown by five per cent since this time a year ago.

So, on behalf of your Board of Directors and our staff, we wish great educational success to our member schools, their staff and students, and to the fans in their communities. Let's get started on a great new era in the history of participation by junior high and middle school students in Illinois. IESA was organized and began the administration of its interscholastic activities in 1929. This year we launch three-class competition in boys baseball and four-class competition in girls basketball, boys basketball and girls volleyball.

In school term 2006-07 we will again crown state champions in girls softball, boys baseball, boys and girls cross-country, girls basketball, boys basketball, cheerleading, boys wrestling, girls volleyball, and boys and girls track and field, as well as in scholastic bowl. We will again shine our "Spotlight on the Arts" and provide competitive and learning experiences in music, speech and visual art. We will honor again many of our outstanding students in the annual Scholar Attitude program.

We will continue to implement our Strategic Planning. We will maintain the much-appreciated Fan Zone, which provides those who access www.IESA.com one-stop shopping for anything and everything a spectator at any of our state finals needs to know about the event. We will continue to upgrade and enhance the manner in which personnel at our member schools can enter and register their students in the sports and activity series via the internet.

We begin things this August and end them for another year in late May. Please help all of us involved with interscholastic activities continue to provide the successful and popular training ground for students who will carry the lessons they learn at our level to the next level (IHSA) and beyond.

Let's Get Started . . . Again!