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Date: 3/21/2023
NORTHAMPTON — A historic milestone in women’s basketball is about to be reached when the two best teams in the nation play each other for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship on April 2.
That date will mark the 130th anniversary of when the first women’s college basketball game was ever played. Eleven days before that, on March 22, 1893, Smith College Physical Education Director Senda Berenson introduced her students to the new game of what was then called, “basket-ball.”
To honor this oft-forgotten history, Historic Northampton is spearheading an event on March 29 at 7 p.m. over Zoom where the history of women’s basketball and Northampton’s early role in the sport will be discussed and untangled.
Sports historian Rita Liberti, a Northampton resident and professor of kinesiology at California State University, “will describe the early history of women’s basketball, from its beginning in Northampton to its spread across the nation,” according to the event’s social media page.
Throughout this discussion, she will explore how the history of women’s basketball sheds light on the larger social and cultural issues in the United States, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class.
“I really want to highlight how fast the game grew,” Liberti said, in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
Berenson developed the initial iteration of women’s basketball rules during her time at Smith, but according to Liberti, these rules were vastly different than what the modern game currently looks like.
In the late 19th century, Berenson created rules that attempted to make it easier for society to embrace women basketball players during a period where gender equity was still out of the question. The initial makeup required players to stay in their designed areas throughout three different sections of the court. She also disallowed “snatching the ball,” holding it for more than three seconds and dribbling it more than three times.
The result was a much slower game than what is played now.
“You couldn’t run up and down the court as you might today,” said Liberti, whose research as a professor often focuses on 20th century women’s sports. “People feared that women’s bodies couldn’t handle the strain of running up and down the court.”
The game quickly grew a local following and became the center point for a lot of excitement around Smith College. According to Liberti, outside of graduation, basketball was one of the biggest sources of excitement that manifested on campus.
“They would play it between classes,” said Liberti. “The freshmen would play the sophomores, you know, that kind of thing.”
Reactions were not always positive, though, according to Liberti. While many found jubilation in the sport’s novelty, there was still a sector of the population that still felt sports were a man’s game and feared that women’s participation in sports would lead to more injury.
“Remember, this is the end of the Victorian Era where these fears of female frailty are still really persistent,” said Liberti. “But these perceptions didn’t stop them [from playing].”
Women’s participation in basketball quickly spread throughout different pockets of the country very early on. Even with little national recognition, women all across the country were participating in the sport.
Eleven months after Berenson introduced the game at Smith, the University of California-Berkeley faced a Berkeley prep school called Miss Head’s School in what is considered the first official women’s game between two institutions. Supposedly, the first intercollegiate game occurred in 1896 between UC Berkeley and Stanford, according to Liberti.
Despite what seemed like a countrywide interest in the sport, Liberti said women’s basketball did not garner much national recognition until the 1970s, and even as late as the 21st century.
“Individual communities were very excited about women’s basketball,” said Liberti. “But it wouldn’t be for decades until the sport garnered national public attention.”
Athletes played under Berenson’s initial rules until as late as the 1960s, and in the case of some smaller high schools, as late as the 1970s and 1980s. It was then that the modern iteration of the game we know now was finally embedded within women’s basketball.
People can participate in the Zoom event by registering online: https://www.historicnorthampton.org/programs.html.