The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) was founded in 1927. This organization is in charge of all girls’ sports and one of their main goals is to give recognition to the teams and individuals that deserve to be known. This union has been around for almost 100 years, but this year they started a new organization in order to give the ‘Iowa Girl’ a voice.
The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee is a new group that consists of 11 girls from around the state. The girls come from various sized schools and they will meet throughout the year in order to bring up issues related to girls athletics in Iowa. These members will act as the voice for Iowa’s female student-athletes.
Maddie Peterson, a member of the committee from Central DeWitt, said, “I wanted to be apart of this committee because I wanted to represent student-athletes across the state and help to be a voice for them.”
This committee will meet every season of the year to discuss and provide feedback for issues concerning sportsmanship, student leadership, and participation of sports. The members will also try and get more students to participate in their schools student section.
PV’s athletic director and member of IGHSAU, D’Anne Kroemer is very excited about this new addition to the union. “Our mission is to showcase the Iowa Girl, so for us to have the Iowa girls’ input is critical to the way we do things. They have experience, know what young women want to see in athletics, and what opportunities they want us to bring for them. We thought it was way cool when our leader, Jean Berger, came to us with this idea,” Kroemer stated.
The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee met for the first time on Sept. 12 to discuss their roles and bring new ideas to the table. “At our first meeting, all of us discussed what we want to get out of this committee and some of the goals we have. I would say the main goal is to take suggestions that we’re receiving from our local areas and bring them to the attention of the committee so that it can be improved,” Peterson explained.
There is a lot of excitement and high hopes that this new group can help improve Iowa female sports and give them the attention they deserve.
