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IGHSAU (Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union) and IHSAA (Iowa High School Athletic Association) have put out a press report stating their decision to move girls’ tennis and boys’ golf to the fall season for the 2025-2026 school year. Their reasoning was to make the amount of sports for each season more equal, so as to not have an overload of sports for one season over another.
However, this decision has both positive and negative repercussions for athletes and schools.
The positives
Spring is already known to be a busy time for all, with graduation and senior year events, the end of the school year, and nearing summer plans. Additionally, since tennis and golf are common recreational sports, if the sports are moved to the fall, the facilities for these sports will be less crowded during the traditional season.
Most of the Midwest has already practiced separating golf seasons for girls and boys, and all other Midwestern states have separated the tennis seasons by gender, which has been successful for them. This was likely one of the deciding factors for IGHSAU and IHSAA directors since it would even out the number of sports per season for schools.
Furthermore, making this move could make it possible for Iowa high schools to add more sports to the spring in the future or move summer sports to the spring. Doing this also makes it so that there are fewer school absences for sport-related occasions, and attendance has been a focus of many new policies in Iowa.
While there are many benefits to moving the sporting schedule around for the next year, there are also possible downfalls that come with it.
The negatives
Participation in many sports will likely change greatly, especially since two popular sports in Iowa, boy’s football and girl’s volleyball, both take place in the fall. This will likely lead to less participation in tennis and golf since student-athletes already struggle to find extra time during the fall semester. Similarly, students who choose golf and tennis over other sports will in turn affect the participation levels of those other fall sports. This will likely affect smaller Iowa high schools because limited participation could lead to certain teams being cut at schools with a smaller population.
Another thing to consider is that fall sports often run into the early winter with end-of-season meets and games like State matches. For outside sports like golf and tennis, this could be tough on athletes who are used to the sunny weather and higher temperatures offered by the usual spring season.
As an athlete who already plays multiple sports in the fall and participates in other extracurriculars, I will have to determine what activities are a priority for me and drop other activities that I greatly enjoy. This kind of decision is very difficult to make, and many student-athletes will be affected in this way.
Prioritizing certain sports over others and the change of performance conditions due to different weather will be some of the issues to face, but that will be in exchange for less busy schedules and higher attendance rates.
There are many pros and cons to moving these sports to the fall season, but the overall effect is definite: it will be a change that high school athletes in Iowa will need to adapt to.
