East Suburban Catholic Conference
The East Suburban Catholic Conference (ESCC) is an athletic conference consisting of 10 Catholic high schools in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois (though despite its name, two schools are located in the city itself). The conference became independent in 1974. While originally only supporting competition in men's sports, the conference began supporting women's athletics in 1991. Today, there are eleven women's teams and ten men's teams. Despite not being as old as other conferences, and not having any women's sports until relatively recent history, the teams in the conference have finished  in the top four of Illinois High School Association (IHSA) sponsored state tournaments 76 times in nine different sports. Current membership. Notre Dame and St. Patrick are all male institutions, and thus do not field women's teams. The rest of the schools are coed, and are represented in the ESCC by both their men's and women's teams. Marian Central Catholic High School joined at the end of 2013-2014 football season for all sports except football. Marian Central Catholic began competing in the ESCC for football in the 2014-2015 season. Somewhat unusual by the standards of  the metropolitan Chicago area, the conference is spread over a five county area. While most of the members are in Cook County. Joliet Catholic is in Will County to Chicago's southwest. Benet Academy is in DuPage County which is to the west of Chicago. Carmel is far to the north in Lake County and Marian Central is in McHenry County which is far northwest of the city. The distance between the furthest schools (Marian Central and Marian Catholic) is approximately 90 miles (160.9 km). History. The conference can trace its roots back to the founding of the Suburban Catholic  Conference in 1960. Among the six founding members, only Joliet Catholic, Notre Dame, and Benet Academy (then known as "St. Procopius") are currently ESCC members. Carmel joined in 1966. In 1970, Joliet Catholic temporarily left, with four new schools joining: Marist, St. Joseph, St. Patrick, and St. Viator. With the conference now at 14, the conference divided into two divisions. The East Division included the four new schools, Carmel, Notre Dame, and Holy Cross High School. In 1971 St. Francis de Sales High School joined the East Division. In 1974, the two divisions split forming the West Suburban Catholic Conference  and the ESCC (in 1989, the West Suburban Catholic Conference would drop the "West" and return to using the original conference name). After one year, St. Joseph left to pursue one year as an independent school, and came back to replace St. Francis de Sales which left after the 1975-76 season. Joliet Catholic joined in 1982. The conference elected to expand in 1990 by adding Benet Academy and Marian Catholic. As a result of the number of coed schools in the conference, the conference began sponsoring competition for women in 1991. In 1996, for football only, the ESCC and  Chicago Catholic League merged to form the Chicago Metro League. This relationship ended after the 2002 football season, with Holy Cross High School joining the Chicago Catholic League permanently for all sports, and Nazareth Academy joining the ESCC. In 2010, St. Joseph High School withdrew from the conference. Sports sponsored. The conference sponsors competition for men and women in basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, track and field, and volleyball. Men's competition is sponsored in baseball, football, and wrestling, while competition for women is sponsored in softball. With each sport, the conference recognizes "All-Conference" and "Scholar Athlete