On the afternoon of April 1, 1921, coaches and representatives from high schools across Colorado adopted the first constitution of the Colorado High School Athletic Conference, the organization that would grow into what is now the Colorado High School Activities Association. The news made the front page of the Boulder Daily Camera's afternoon edition that same day, under the headline:
“High School Athletics Are Under Conference By Agreement Today”
The meeting was conducted by William S. Roe, principal of Colorado Springs High School, and was well attended.
According to the Daily Camera's account, most of the discussion concerned details and interpretations of eligibility rules. No serious objection was raised to the constitution itself, and no radical changes were made to it during the meeting.
The biggest point of contention was Section 6, Article II, which addressed how local leagues were formed. That section allowed the board of control — the conference's executive body — to compel a school's admission into any league it chose, if the school could not otherwise obtain league membership. Schools on the Western Slope and in southern Colorado objected, arguing that schools in isolated districts, whose travel expenses could triple those of other members, could be forced onto leagues and thrust that financial burden onto more fortunate schools. The objection was resolved by giving the board authority to prescribe conditions of entrance meant to eliminate that unfairness, and with that addition, the section was adopted.
Eligibility rules also occupied considerable time at the meeting, but were eventually settled to the satisfaction of most of those present. The conference adopted the Spalding official rules as the standard governing all contests, while reserving each league's right to add its own local rules as needed.
As adopted, the constitution organized the entire state into local leagues, which were in turn grouped into four major districts. Each of those districts elected members to a board of control that administered the affairs of the entire state — the same four-division structure the board would formalize the following month at its first meeting. The Daily Camera predicted the new constitution would “standardize all state interscholastic athletics and eliminate disputes of title,” a pointed reference to the controversy over the previous fall's football season.
The text the schools voted on that April had already run in the newspapers three months earlier. On January 3, 1921, the Rocky Mountain News published the tentative constitution drafted by a committee appointed at a statewide high school meeting the previous week, circulating it to the administrators who had attended for ratification. The paper introduced it this way:
“The following is the tentative constitution and bylaws drawn up by a committee appointed by the state high school meeting of last Wednesday. This has been submitted to those who were present for their ratification, and if so ratified will go into force.”