Basketball
Adelaide
Marquand Hanscom Leeson
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This is a sidebar on early basketball at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Sarah, who graduated in 1899, is in her basketball uniform in front of Adelaide's studio behind the Walnut street, Berkeley, house. Basketball was invented in 1891 and within weeks women were playing the new game. In 1892 rules were written for women's basketball. The first game between two schools was held in 1892, the University of California against Miss Head's School, Berkeley. By 1895 women's basketball was being played at colleges across the country. The rules varied with the location. April 4, 1896, the first women's intercollegiate game took place in San Francisco between Stanford and Cal. Stanford won, 2 to 1. 700 women attended. By 1898, Berkeley was the team to beat on the West coast. |
Back then, women's basketball was not the game it is today. The court was divided into three sections, and the women could not cross out of their own section. Originally, the young women could not bat the ball out of an opponent's hands, as there was great concern to keep the game "lady-like" and to not cause any over-exertion in the women. Senda Berenson, who was responsible for the spread of basketball, worried that the young women might risk developing "dangerous nervous tendencies and losing grace and self respect we would all her foster." *1
The first teams wore dresses, to the floor, but by 1896 bloomers were introduced, scandalous as they were. The women often played in tight corsets. Only women were allowed in the audience, and, of course, only women worked with the teams, although, in 1899 eight high school boys disguised themselves in dresses, veils, gloves, and stockings and watched the entire Berkeley-Stockton game.
There was an outcry "that it was eroding sacred concepts of woman-hood. Previously well-bred young ladies could be seen running and falling, shrieking in excitement and, worst of all, calling each other by nicknames."*2 In reaction to this masculine behavior, some parents forbade their daughters to play and a general cry to abolish the game was sounded. So they rewrote the rules for women;s basketball, and a seriously restricted version of the game for girls persisted, in some high schools, into the 1960s.
Berkeley was a power team. In 1898 they were defeating other Bay Area colleges, high schools, private schools, and YWCA teams. They beat Mills College 13-1 and the Mission YWCA 10-1. In April of 1898 they beat the University of Nevada, Reno, in Berkeley. Berkeley won again the next year, but the Reno team had improved and played much rougher. One girl got a broken nose.*3
