IHSA Staff

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Scott Johnson has served IHSA member schools as an assistant executive director since July 2001. Johnson came to the IHSA in August 1994 to take the new position of Data Processing Manager. From 1998 to 2001 he served as Director of Information Technology.

During his tenure at the IHSA, Johnson has directed the Association's internal and external computer operations, including the IHSA Web site, and served as editor of IHSA souvenir programs and other publications. Since 2002, Johnson has directed the IHSA's team chess program.

Johnson currently serves as Chairman of the NFHS Records Committee, which publishes the National High School Sports Record Book each year. Johnson's love of high school sports history and records has also earned him the unofficial title of IHSA Historian. While mining the resources of the state's libraries, Johnson made two major finds relating to the IHSA. He discovered the actual date of the IHSA's founding, December 27, 1900, while browsing through old journals in the stacks at the University of Illinois. An article he found in the Chicago Tribune of November 3, 1907, established the date that the IHSA banned interscholastic athletics for girls. (Full participation for girls was not restored until 1972.)

In 2002, the IHSA published a book written by Johnson and his wife, Julie Kistler. Once There Were Giants commemorates the Hebron Green Giants, who won the 1952 single-class basketball championship in one of Illinois' most memorable sporting events. Johnson edited and co-wrote a follow-up book on the IHSA boys' basketball tournament, 100 Years of Madness, in 2007.

Prior to joining the IHSA, Johnson worked for six years as a systems programmer in the University of Illinois' Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory, and before that for seven years at Control Data Corporation in Minneapolis.

Johnson is a graduate of Elgin High School and the University of Illinois.