This study is an investigation of the development and one hundred year history of high school girls' sport in the city and suburbs of Philadelphia. Its focus is on how and why, over time, the experiences of schoolgirl athletes in the city of Philadelphia were different from the experiences of schoolgirl athletes in the surrounding suburbs. Using place, gender and race critical perspectives, high school yearbooks, augmented by oral histories, were used as primary resources to determine the origins of sport programs in public high schools throughout the region, the uneven impact of national professional standards on city and suburban schoolgirl sport programs, the creation of a unique city sport culture, the changes in school sport as a result of the suburbanization in the region and finally, the impact of suburban school district reorganizations on black schoolgirl athletes. Along with an examination of newspapers and other secondary sources this study suggests that suburban schoolgirl experiences emerged as the normative expression of schoolgirl sport. / Urban Education