[1] A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs.

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.

In the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Spalding Athletic Library of the Spaulding Company published the Official Rules of the AAU.

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.

Prior to the AAU, the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America (NAAA) existed from 1879 to 1888.

The AAU was co-founded in 1888 by William Buckingham Curtis to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sports.

[citation needed] 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 first AAU women's basketball tournament was held in April 1926 at the Los Angeles Athletics Club.

[citation needed] 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.

[12] 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.

[14] 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.

[17] Prior to 1936, ice hockey in North America was governed by the AAU and the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada.

[22] With the merger, the IIHF chose to recognize the AHAUS as the governing body of hockey in the United States, instead of the AAU.

Their position was supported when FILA, then wrestling's world governing body, refused to accept membership of "umbrella" sports organizations like the AAU.

As a result, many American athletes' careers were frequently cut short shortly after their subsidized participation at the collegiate level ended, even as Eastern Bloc and other international athletes frequently had their careers extended under the facade of being a part of national military or police service (usually being more honorary than productive work) which extended their amateurism.

Track and Field News discussed the subject with its cover article "Take the Money and Run" in November 1971.

In 1970, the AAU officially moved its national headquarters to Indianapolis, serving as the catalyst which eventually bills the city as the “Amateur Sports Capital” of the United States.

[29] In 1996, the AAU relocated its national headquarters to Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

The idea came to fruition when Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey proclaimed the first AAU Junior Olympic Games open on August 21, 1967 in downtown Washington, D.C., at the Departmental Auditorium on Constitution Avenue.

Five hundred twenty-three athletes competed in the inaugural AAU Junior Olympic Games in Washington, D.C. in 1967.

The inaugural AAU Junior National Volleyball Championships took place on June 25, 1974 in Catonsville, Maryland.

The event was held at ESPN's Wide World of Sports and the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

The 50th AAU Junior National Volleyball Championships in 2023 was the largest event to date with 5,194 teams (966 boys and 4228 girls) competing.

[36] Currently in conjunction with the AAU Junior National Volleyball Championships are Dig Pink® initiatives benefitting the Side-Out Foundation.

In 1944, Ann Curtis, an 18-year-old swimmer from San Francisco, became the first woman to receive the AAU Sullivan Award.

Other finalists included David Taylor (Wrestler), Emery Lehman (Speedskating), Frederick Richard (Gymnastics), Madisen Skinner (Volleyball) and Noah Jaffe (Para Swimming) .

[42] 1999 HBO documentary Dare to Compete: The Struggle of Women in Sports won the Peabody Award.

[44] LeBron James founded SpringHill Entertainment in 2007 to produce the award-winning documentary, which chronicles his high school basketball career.

Kerr also states that "The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric".