Prior to this, the public and private schools in the area had been competing among themselves for several years in a number of sports, including football and basketball.
Crew was especially popular in Philadelphia, as the University of Pennsylvania sponsored interscholastic meets for the sport and encouraged its adoption by the city high schools.
The league experimented with indoor track (1915–21), ice hockey (1922), and bowling (1930–32), but these sports drew insufficient interest to sustain them.
Crew was dropped by the league in 1919, which was a great blow to Central High, which for decades had one of the strongest rowing programs in the country.
[1] At least twelve different private schools—secular, Quaker, and Catholic— were members, the most notable being Brown Preparatory, Roman Catholic, Friends Central Select, and LaSalle.