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Articles on high schools and secondary schools, with rare exceptions, have been kept when nominated at Articles for Deletion except where they fail verifiability. This essay is being written to achieve similar status for the sports leagues these institutions are involved in.

A large majority of high schools, particularly those with any significant population, are involved in interscholastic athletics, meaning sports between other schools. While this concept is not limited to the United States or even North America, much of the reference here is toward the United States. Other editors, feel free to add localized information to this page.

United States
In the United States, high school athletics is governed by the National Federation of State High School Associations, known by the acronym (NFHS). The term NFHS is not nearly as popular as say the NCAA, which performs the same duties for collegiate level sports. There is a close association between the two organizations, so close the NFHS headquarters are attached to the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

Below the NFHS are 51 member associations, one for each state, plus the District of Columbia and 25 Affiliate Associations covering Canadian provinces, American Military, a couple of Caribbean islands, Guam, non-athletic associations, an elementary school association, Independent schools a holdover legacy to Segregation academies and Iowa's holdover segregated girl's Association..

Under each of these associations are the schools, which generally are divided by geographically proximity into manageable groups of leagues. Most states have so many high schools and even so many leagues they have to further subdivide groups of leagues into other forms, called variously; Divisions, Conferences, Regions, Sections. Whatever the semantics, these are different levels of the organization. In the majority of cases, these divisions are also the path of the Tournament tree, where the top athletes or team (depending on the sport) have an opportunity to play the top athletes or teams from other leagues. This is equivalent to covering any of the individual NCAA Conferences.

It is these individual leagues, the nether regions of the farthest branches on the tree, that we are discussing the notability of. Again, assuming the notability of most high schools, each league being comprised of multiple schools, each league would be responsible for a larger territory than its already notable component parts. You might be able to find exceptions to these situations, but this follows the same likelihood as a non-notable school, primarily subject to verification.

Let's refer to WP:NSPORT: "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia.""

By its mere existence, a high school league of any significance will be listed on MaxPreps.com, a CBS owned recruiting and results site. There are other sites, but this is a big dog in the industry and is extremely efficient in this realm. Do not disregard the importance of recruiting. With the exponential rise in college tuition costs, parents see the possibility of an athletic scholarship as a potential solution to the high cost of a college education, much less the dream of them becoming a professional athlete. Starting at an increasing younger age, they begin grooming their children who show potential, to excel in sports. There are sports performance schools, clinics and personal trainers; it has become an entire industry aimed at improving an athlete's performance in these leagues, in order to get recruited for a scholarship to college. This will verify the existence of the league and the current structure.

You can also go back a few years to see previous compositions of the league (because these things do change periodically). This is a natural process governed by the upper body. Leagues are designated to keep teams on a reasonable level of parity. The coaches for those teams work every day trying to make their team superior to the competition. When they succeed with too much regularity, the entire school's program gets elevated to a more competitive league, while a school who is struggling at the higher level will go down.

This might sound like a story is being written right here. Every league has a story; a history;  alumni. Even a newly created league has a story behind the need to create it. This story begins with anticipation of the new season, for each new sport. Most leagues cover multiple sports, upwards of 20 sports for most full service leagues, depending on how you count sports with or without separate gender seasons. With each game in each sport there is a new story to tell and frequently to be told from a before and after perspective.

Who is telling this story? Journalists, primarily local journalists. There are very few local newspapers who have survived without covering the local sports teams. If there is a town large enough to support a newspaper, it will have a high school who plays in a league, possibly on the smallest level, against another team from another town with another newspaper. As long as each league has existed, potentially back more than a century, there has been coverage of the local high sports teams in the history of almost every newspaper that has existed, each of them playing in one of these leagues, in a season predicated on trying to win the championship of that league. The smaller the town the more a specific team or league will be the focus, but league play, league scoring records often dictate the radio or television "Game of the Week" as a programming staple a concept not lost on larger TV stations and regional networks like the Fox Sports Networks.

Fiction and non-fiction has been written about the importance high school sports have over local communities. Friday Night Lights is a book, a TV series and a movie; Hoosiers; Wildcats; Varsity Blues; All the Right Moves; Remember the Titans.


 * Wikipedia has the Category:High school football coaches in the United States, Category:High school basketball coaches in the United States, Category:High school baseball coaches in the United States cumulatively populated by over 2,000 notable individuals as of the initial writing of this essay. Where were the games that made the individuals notable played?  They were in these leagues.


 * The "Infobox School" contains datafields for the athletic conference along with rivals and sports. What are those boxes referring to?  These leagues and the rivalries within the leagues.


 * Most schools list their alumni (an unpopular practice to a faction of administrators), where the most common attribute is as a professional athlete. These leagues were often the places these evolving or eventual pro athletes became stars, playing before crowds that were made up of more than just moms and dads.  Their careers before being drafted to the pros are relevant.  Most professional athlete databases list the high school these athletes came from.  Those high schools, those athletes, played in these leagues.  Though its rare, some athletes come directly out of high school to the pros.

It would be exceptional, perhaps even notable, for a league to be so small and their programs as a group so futile that they have not produced a star athlete, coach or state championship team. When each athlete advances to a college, there will be coverage of the new player and their accomplishments in league play, with league awards. Most collegiate websites, any with a competent Sports Information Director, have a bio on each of their athletes, referring back to the high school and often the league and league related accomplishments.

When each team challenges for the state title, there will be coverage anticipating the game or tournament. If they win, obviously there is further coverage, not just in the home town reports but in the reports of the losers. Where did this team come from? Winning on the end of the tournament path began with winning in their local league. That is the necessary path to getting into any tournament. Multiply by upwards of twenty tournaments a year (one per sport) initiated by performance in this league and over any period of time it is virtually impossible to have no coverage.

In Wikipedia terms, it is likely to meet the general notability guideline.

Why does this essay need to be written? Because there are enough uninformed Administrators on Wikipedia, who will speedy delete these articles under WP:A7 as a knee-jerk reaction. Here is your generic claim to notability for any such league. Do you due diligence first. Its not always easy to isolate the information, but its there. If you are convinced one article or even an entire group of articles are not notable; that supporting references do not exist; as a precursor to your rapid class action, take one of those articles to AfD. Post a record of the AfD here. Over time we will have documentation of the success record at AfD to back up the statements in this essay. A mass attack on a group of articles defeats that function by overwhelming the editors in question.

Why are these stub articles? We are talking about a lot of articles. While there is a story behind every one of these leagues, the worker editors posting the existence of the league do not necessarily know that story. Just like everything on wikipedia, we depend on collaboration to build the story. Any administrator with the power to delete articles should know this process. First you have to have the article in place, complete with the core information, verified by a source. Those are relatively easy to create, forming the roadmap of league structures. The harder information to obtain is the background story This takes input from an expert in this exact subject. There is so much coverage of the minutia of weekly games multiplied over numerous seasons, it takes specialized knowledge to properly put that into perspective, identify trends and cite successful alumni.