Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union is an amateur sports organization based in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs. It has more than 900,000 members nationwide, including more than 100,000 volunteers. The philosophy of the AAU is "Sports for All, Forever."
The AAU was founded on January 21, 1888, by James E. Sullivan and William Buckingham Curtis with the goal of creating common standards in amateur sport. Since then, most national championships for youth athletes in the United States have taken place under AAU leadership. From its founding as a publicly supported organization, the AAU has represented U.S. sports within the various international sports federations. In the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Spalding Athletic Library of the Spalding Company published the Official Rules of the AAU.
The AAU formerly worked closely with what is now today the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to prepare U.S. athletes for both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, helping in the qualification of athletes to form the national team. As part of this, the AAU Junior Olympic Games were introduced in 1949, with athletes aged 8 to 16 years, or older in certain sports, being able to participate. Many future World and Olympic champions have appeared in these events, which are still held every year.
In the 1970s, the AAU received growing criticism. Many claimed that its regulatory framework was outdated. Women were banned from participating in certain competitions and some runners were locked out. The sporting goods industry also criticized the AAU for stifling innovation by forcing outdated or overreaching standards on their goods and game equipment. During this time, the Olympic Sports Act of 1978 organized the then United States Olympic Committee and saw the re-establishment of independent associations for the Olympic sports, referred to as national governing bodies. The rise of professionalism in all sports in the latter half of the 20th century also hurt the AAU's viability. As a result, the AAU lost its influence and importance in international sports, and focused on the support and promotion of predominantly youthful athletes, as well as on the organization of national sports events.
History
Prior to the AAU, the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America existed from 1879 to 1888. The AAU was co-founded in 1888 by William Buckingham Curtis to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sports. During its early years the AAU served as a leader in international sport representing the United States in the international sports federations. The AAU worked closely with the Olympic movement to prepare athletes for the Olympic Games.The AAU conducted its first event, championships for boxing, fencing, and wrestling, on April 6, 1888, at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House.
The open USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships were organized by the AAU between 1888 and 1978. In 1923 the AAU sponsored the First American Track & Field championships for women.
In 1897, the AAU held its first national men's basketball championship. The winner was the 23rd Street YMCA from New York City. The first AAU women's basketball tournament was held in April 1926 at the Los Angeles Athletics Club. The Pasadena Athletic & Country Club Flying Rings were crowned the champions.
In 1913, the AAU and the International Olympic Committee removed Native American athlete Jim Thorpe's two Olympic medals, for decathlon and pentathlon, earned in the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden, because Thorpe had previously played for a semi-professional baseball team. The AAU retroactively revoked Thorpe's amateur status, and the IOC delisted Thorpe as the winner of those events.
Because the removal did not happen within the time required by the rules at the time, Thorpe was later relisted in 1983 as the "co-champion" of those events, even though the other athletes involved considered Thorpe to be the sole winner. Thorpe was finally restored as the sole champion in 2022, decades after his death.
The AAU logo is prominently displayed on the Jim Thorpe Monument in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, a town re-named after Thorpe, who had no connection with it in his lifetime.
In 1939, the Mr. America contest, a bodybuilding competition, was started by the AAU. It was first held on July 4, 1939, and the winner was named "America's Best Built Man". In 1940 this was changed to what is now known as the Mr. America contest. Rights to the Mr. America name have been sold several times after the AAU discontinued holding the contest in 1999.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the NCAA engaged in a bitter power struggle with the AAU.
After the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 broke up the AAU's responsibility as the national Olympic sports governing body, the AAU focused on providing sports programs for all participants of all ages beginning at the local and regional levels.
The AAU is divided into 55 distinct district associations, which annually sanction 45 sports programs, 250 national championships, and over 30,000 age division events. The AAU events have over 900,000 participants and over 100,000 volunteers.
Women barred
In early 1914, the Amateur Athletic Union barred women athletes from competing in events that it sponsored. Later in 1914 they changed their rules and allowed women to compete in a limited number of swimming events. Just two years later in 1916, the AAU was considering discontinuing their experiment in allowing women at swimming events.In 1922, the Metropolitan AAU in New York City approved a larger program of sanctioned events for women but still barred them from running events over one-half mile because they were considered too strenuous. The reason given for barring women was that if a woman was allowed to run more than a half-mile they would put their reproductive health at risk. But by 1923 the AAU allowed women to compete in most sports, including basketball. The AAU held women's basketball tournaments from 1926 through 1970.
In 1961, the Amateur Athletic Union still prohibited women from competing in road running events and even if organizers broke the rule and allowed a woman to participate, her results would not be counted in the official race results.
In 1970, the first New York City Marathon ignored the AAU rules and allowed women in the event even if it meant that their scores would not be official. For the second New York City Marathon in 1971 the AAU allowed women to participate if they started the race 10 minutes before, or 10 minutes after the men, or if they ran a separate but equal course. In 1972 Nina Kuscsik, Pat Barrett, Lynn Blackstone, Liz Franceschini, Cathy Miller, and Jane Muhrke protested the rule of the AAU, which as implemented by the New York City Marathon that year meant that women had to start running ten minutes before the men. The women protested by sitting down and waiting ten minutes while holding signs protesting the rule, before starting to run when the men started; they became known as the NYC Six due to their protest. Ten minutes were added to their times. The ten minute difference requirement was dropped later in 1972.
By 1974 women in general were becoming more vocal about their restrictions.
Ice hockey breaks away
The United States failed to send a ice hockey team to the 1928 Winter Olympics due to a dispute between the United States Amateur Hockey Association and the American Olympic Committee. In 1930, the USAHA was dissolved and the AAU took control of amateur hockey in the United States.After the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association split ways with the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada in 1937, the AAU terminated its working agreement with the CAHA which had allowed for transferring of players and exhibition games between the two countries. The AAU then issued an ultimatum to the Eastern Amateur Hockey League in August 1937, not to have any Canadian-born players in its league. EAHL president Tommy Lockhart chose to break away from the AAU and reached an agreement with the CAHA, then founded the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States to govern ice hockey. The AHAUS and the CAHA joined to form the International Ice Hockey Association, which merged into the Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace to become the International Ice Hockey Federation in 1947. With the merger, the IIHF chose to recognize the AHAUS as the governing body of hockey in the United States, instead of the AAU.
Despite the decision by the IIHF, the AAU sent its own team to compete in ice hockey at the 1948 Winter Olympics. The AAU was supported by the United States Olympic Committee led by Avery Brundage, who threatened a United States boycott the Olympics if an AHAUS team was recognized instead of an AAU team. The status of ice hockey at the 1948 Winter Olympics was not resolved until the night before the Olympics began, after bitter negotiations. The International Olympic Committee allowed the AHAUS team to participate, but they were ineligible to win an Olympic medal. The dispute was resolved in 1950 with the creation of an Olympic hockey committee composed of an equal number of members from the AAU and AHAUS.