Grosse Pointe South High School


Grosse Pointe South High School is a public high school of state and national historical significance serving the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe. Originally known as Grosse Pointe High School when opened in 1928, the school adopted its current name in 1968 after the newly established Grosse Pointe North High School began accepting students.

Communities served and feeder patterns

The school serves the following municipalities: almost all of Grosse Pointe Farms, and all of Grosse Pointe and Grosse Pointe Park.
Elementary schools feeding into GPSHS include all of the zones of Defer, Kerby, Maire, Père Gabriel Richard, and Trombly. All of the boundaries of Pierce Middle School and most of the boundary of Brownell Middle School coincides with that of GPSHS.

Academics

In 2009, Grosse Pointe South ranked in the top 2% of High Schools-Nationwide.
By 2010, Newsweek posted that Grosse Pointe South High School ranked 920 and Grosse Pointe North High School was 899th.

Extracurricular activities

Athletics

As of 2010, the school offers 15 varsity sports teams for boys and 18 varsity sports teams for girls. These sports include baseball, basketball, competitive cheer, crew, cross country, field hockey, figure skating, football, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, sailing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, synchronized swimming, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and wrestling. Grosse Pointe South competes in the Macomb Area Conference, under the regulation of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

Tennis

The boys' tennis team won the class A state championship in 1945 and 1946 and tied with Monroe High School in 1947. The girls' tennis team won the state championship every year from 1976 to 1986, 2008, 2012, and 2014.

Pointe Players

Pointe Players is Grosse Pointe South's student theater organization. It is Troupe #49 of the International Thespian Society. It is also among the five oldest clubs at South, as it was started in 1929.
The group produces one main stage play each Fall. Recent productions have included Daniel J. Sullivan's Inspecting Carol, Christopher Sergel's adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, John Van Druten's I Remember Mama, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!
In 2008, the 'Players' performed Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project, a controversial play about the murder of gay University of Wyoming student, Matthew Shepard.

The Sun Devils Solar Car Team

‘’’The South Sun Devils’’’ is the Solar Car Team, competing since 2013 in the Solar Car Challenge in Dallas, Texas. The team, fundraised, designed, built, and raced their street-legal car on the Dallas Motor Speedway followed by a road test challenge.,

Martin Luther King Jr. visit and speech

Grosse Pointe High School hosted a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. on March 14, 1968, when 2,700 people gathered in the gymnasium to hear a speech entitled , just three weeks before his assassination. Dr. King had already visited Detroit and led a march in the city of Detroit where he gave an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech.
To honor the 50th anniversary of the event the Grosse Pointe News partnered with the Grosse Pointe Public School System and the Grosse Pointe Board of Realtors in submitting an application for a historic site marker to be placed near the one previously installed on campus. The marker, which was approved by the Michigan Historical Commission on July 27, 2018, was paid for by a grant from the National Association of Realtors.

Notable alumni