Mindfulness Cards
Presented by Your Life Iowa and Musco Lighting
Student Services
BUILDING TOMORROW’S LEADERS THROUGH OUTREACH & EDUCATION
The Iowa High School Athletic Association recognizes that leadership is nurtured both on and off the field of play. That’s why we are proud to provide outreach and educational services for Iowa students and member schools in addition to our athletic offerings.
IOWA ASSOCIATION OF STUDENT COUNCILS
The mission of the Iowa Association of Student Councils is to serve Iowa schools, students, and advisers by providing resources, programs, leadership opportunities through collaboration, education, support, and recognition to build tomorrow’s leaders.
GOVERNOR’S SCHOLAR
Iowa’s students lead the nation in academic performance and critical thinking skills. In recognition of these students’ achievements, the IHSAA annually honors the highest achieving academic seniors as selected by each member school.
Student Advisory Committee
This group was launched in 2021 to assist the organization in its efforts to promote leadership, sportsmanship and integrity. The committee will also provide the IHSAA with an important direct link to the “student voice” as it pertains to programs of the IHSAA. Twelve students will be selected to this committee from nominations submitted by member schools. The application is open to all juniors and senior, regardless of gender.
UNIFIED SPORTS
The IHSAA has supported Special Olympics Iowa since 2023-24 to promote unified sports programs in Iowa schools. Unified sports are fully inclusive sports or fitness programs that combine an approximately equal number of students with and without intellectual disabilities.
IHSAA Achieve Connections Workshops
We support student leaders by giving them growth opportunities through programs and workshops. One of our biggest programs is Achieve Connections. Through this, Iowa high schools are invited to host a workshop to help foster leadership development. A continued focus is student mental health along with bystander intervention.
Achieve Challenge
The Achieve Challenge — formerly the Iowa Pride Challenge — is a statewide community service initiative for Iowa schools and their basketball programs.
Participating schools have the opportunity to select a service project that is meaningful for their students and community, win service awards, and allow their boys’ and girls’ high school basketball teams to compete in an Achieve Challenge scrimmage/exhibition contest.
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
For decades, IHSAA has recognized the academic accomplishments of teams through their combined grade point averages (GPA) during the semesters of their sport seasons.
Distinguished in Academic Achievement: 4.00 — 3.26 GPA.
Excellence in Academic Achievement: 3.25 — 3.00 GPA.
Bullying & Violence Prevention
We partner with UNI’s Center for Violence Prevention (CVP) to help students build positive environments through preventing violence and creating safer communities. Learn more about our Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, our Coaching Boys into Men™ (CBIM) trainings, and more.
Be Nice
The be nice. mental health education & suicide prevention training is a 4-step action plan: Notice, Invite, Challenge, and Empower. Simple common language to start conversations about mental health. Goals of the program are to equip coaches with practical mental health & suicide prevention tools, create common language across teams, and strengthen confidence in sharing resources that are readily available to student-athletes & coaches
CONTACT THE IHSAA
Please contact us to obtain additional information about our educational resources or to schedule an outreach event.