As I said earlier, many schools did not participate because they preferred to put more focus on their spring sports teams.
Spring football existed in the '30s for sure, possibly also the late '20s. The coaches' association voted to eliminate it during the middle of WWII in order to conserve scarce equipment and show support for the war effort. Spring football was reinstated after WWII until member schools finally voted in December of '55 to eliminate it beginning with the '56-'57 school year. In a nutshell, 1956 was the last spring that HS football drills were allowed in Ohio. Teams who participated would practice for about 3 weeks and play a couple games/scrimmages.
Interesting factoids from that 1955 vote:
- There were 1053 member schools. There are roughly 820 now.
- Principals voted 633 to 208 to lower the eligibility age from 20 to 19. An athlete was ineligible to compete after attaining the age of 19 with the following exceptions, the athlete could complete the fall season if he turned 19 after Sept, the athlete could complete the winter season if he turned 19 after Nov. 1, and the athlete could complete the spring season if he turned 19 after March 1. 1 editorial I saw regarding this rule change indicates it was much-needed. Pennsylvania already had this 19-year-old age limit, so juniors from PA used to move to Ohio to take advantage of Ohio's 20-year old age limit.
- Principals voted 256 to 115 to ban football practices between December 1 and August 20. If I understand things correctly from the final years of the spring football era, if you did not participate in spring football, you could begin practicing on August 20. If you participated in spring football, you could not begin practice until September 1. The main issue surrounding this vote was that all member schools could vote on this particular item, but many of them didn't participate in spring football, so a lot of schools that had no reason to care about the issue had the ability to ruin it one way or the other for the ones who had a vested interest.