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History (ISA Website 2nd July 2025)
Welcome to the ISA (ISA Website 2nd July 2025)
The Independent Sporting Association (ISA) is a school-based sport association.
Its purpose is to provide inter-school sports competition on a home-and-away basis between the member schools for both genders in Years 7 to 12. The ISA calendar provides an annual sporting programme that offers full and varied opportunities for students and staff. The ISA encourages and promotes citizenship and education through sport with competitions held on Saturdays.
The ISA offers students representative opportunities and at this representative level compete against major school associations in NSW. From these associations, students are selected for the New South Wales Combined Independent Schools (NSWCIS) representative teams to compete against Combined Catholic Colleges (CCC) and Combined High Schools (CHS).
The ISA provides students the opportunity to represent New South Wales and Australia through this and other pathways.
In 1990 an ad hoc meeting was held at Pittwater House chaired by Martin Orrock at which John Giacon from St. Patrick’s made clear the need for schools not included in GPS and CAS competition to have their own Saturday competition for schools. At a subsequent meeting held in Cremorne a number of Heads of Schools gathered, for whom the notion of Saturday sport was very much on their agenda.
This group included single gender boys’ schools such as St. Patrick’s and St. Andrew’s Cathedral School, and co-educational schools large and small including Redlands, Oxley College, Chevalier College, Central Coast Grammar and Pittwater House. It was clear from the start that a mixture of single sex and co-educational schools, large and small schools and Sydney and non-Sydney schools would be difficult to blend into one Association.
Redlands was very much the launch pad for ISA, and we will be forever indebted to Belinda Hunter and Martin Longhurst, to the Redlands Board and to Peter Cornish in particular, because without Redlands and without Peter there would be no ISA.
The ISA over the years has benefited from strong leadership firstly from the Redlands contingent and subsequently from Chairmen Richard Lornie, Grahame Smollett, Phillip Heath, John Edwards, Paul Kidson, Br Peter Ryan, John Collier and our present Chairman, Jonathan Byrne. Our Directors, Annette Gee Maclean and John Townsend, 1999 to 2007, played a huge role in formalizing and raising the profile of the association.
From 2008 to 2022, the Directorship was in the safe hands of Annette Gee-Maclean whose professionalism, pragmatism and vision provides wonderful opportunities for our students to learn and grow through sport.
In Peter Cornish’s words
“history will record the huge effort made by colleagues from disparate backgrounds, both Heads and games directors to make it possible for ISA to commence operation, manage logistics, eventually incorporate for insurance and other purposes and consolidate to be a first force in school games in the same education world as AICES, CAS, CSSA, GPS, IGSA and others.
Finally I know that the history will show, and practice emphasise always, the pivotal role of Games in a complete model of education in any school of merit.”