OTHER WRITINGS: 10 EVENTS THAT SHAPED WOMEN’S SPORTS

10 Events That Shaped Women’s Sports

Who could have predicted at the dawn of the 20th century how freely and exuberantly women would participate in sports today? Hampered by Victorian attitudes and medical misconceptions, women in the year 1900 had to defy convention just to enjoy the freedom of movement offered by the bicycle.

Activist Frances Willard learns how to ride a bicycle, 1890s.

How did we get from there to here? These 10 events helped pave the way.

1901: Basketball Rules!
Basketball was invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1891, and within a year, Smith College gymnastics instructor Senda Berenson had introduced it to her female students. But Berenson worried about the game’s “tendency to roughness,” and she rewrote the rules to outlaw stealing, limit dribbling, and confine each player to cover only one third of the court. Educators at other schools made their own changes in the rules, and by 1899, at least five versions of the women’s game were being played. In 1901, a committee led by Berenson published Basket Ball for Women, meant to be the official rules of the sport. By defining what behavior was appropriate for women on the court, these rules set the tone for women’s basketball—and other team sports—for much of the century.

1926: Trudy Swims the Channel
In the 1920s, the world began to see its first female sports heroes. Tennis players Helen Wills and Suzanne Lenglen, golfer Glenna Collett Vare, and skater Sonja Henie dazzled fans with their skill and grace. But no one created quite the splash that 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle did when she became the first woman to swim the English Channel. On August 6, 1926, the “plucky” swimmer emerged from 14 hours and 31 minutes in the water to learn that she’d beaten the Channel crossing record by almost two hours. “Our Trudy” returned home to a ticker-tape parade, a $2,000-a-week personal-appearance contract, and a declaration by President Calvin Coolidge that she was “America’s best girl.”

1928: Women’s Track Hits a Wall
Despite concerns that the sport of track and field was too taxing and unsavory for women (the uniforms were skimpy and revealing), five events were included in the 1928 Olympic Games on a trial basis. When a few runners fell to the ground after the 800-meter race, however, the exaggerated press reports of “eleven wretched women” fainting or delirious seemed to confirm detractors’ claims. The result? In 1929, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to ban all women’s track-and-field events from future Olympics, but they overturned the decision when the United States threatened to boycott the 1932 Games. Still, all women’s races over 200 meters were banned until 1960, and the longest men’s race, the marathon, wasn’t added for women until 1984.

1932: Babe Breaks Out
She was cocky, brash, and quite possibly, the best all-around female athlete ever. In 1932, Texas-born Mildred “Babe” Didrikson exploded onto the track-and-field scene by single-handedly winning the AAU national women’s team track championships and then taking two gold medals and a silver at the Olympic Games. (The silver was awarded in the high jump, where she tied for the gold, but was penalized for going over the bar headfirst.) Didrikson got her start as a basketball star for the Employers Casualty Insurance Company in the Texas industrial leagues. She would go on to become one of the founders of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in 1949. Before her death of cancer in 1956, she was voted the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Half Century.

1950: Althea Breaks Barriers
Born in South Carolina, raised in Harlem, Althea Gibson never aspired to be a crusader. But in August 1950, this lanky 23-year-old struck a blow for civil rights when she became the first African-American ever to compete in the U.S. National Tennis Championships at Forest Hills, the precursor of the U.S. Open. Until that time, “Negroes” weren’t welcome on the mainstream tennis circuit; instead, they played in their own segregated tournaments. After nearly upsetting defending champion Louise Brough in the second round of the Nationals, Gibson continued breaking barriers. She became the first black player at Wimbledon in 1951, and the first to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals, both in 1957. For good measure, she won both again in 1958.

1960: Wilma Blazes Ahead
Wilma Rudolph overcame crippling childhood illnesses to earn a track scholarship to Tennessee State University and berths on the 1956 and 1960 Olympic teams. In 1960, Rudolph became the first woman ever to win three track-and-field gold medals at a single Olympics, and she did it at the first Olympics to be telecast around the world. Awed by her blazing speed and her graceful strides, TV viewers began to see track in a whole new light. Even the movers and shakers who set America’s physical education policies were impressed. After Rudolph’s performance, they reversed a long-standing bias against international competition and started encouraging—and training—women to compete at the highest levels.

1972: Title IX Clears the Way
The women’s sports revolution started on June 23, 1972. That’s the day President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments into law, banning sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds. Since almost all U.S. schools and colleges received federal money, and since most had woefully inequitable sports programs, the impact of Title IX on women’s sports was huge. In 1970-71, only 294,000 high-school girls competed in interscholastic sports in the United States; by 1998-99, more than 2,652,000 did. Before Title IX, almost no colleges offered sports scholarships for women; by 1995-96, female athletes received more than $212 million in scholarships. Although equity still hasn’t been achieved, Title IX and the people who fought for compliance have at least brought it within reach.

1973: The Libber Clobbers the Lobber
He was a loud-mouthed, over-the-hill hustler who seemed to take great pleasure in claiming that women were inherently inferior to men. She was a tennis superstar, a “women’s libber,” and a leader in the fight for increased opportunities and prize money for female athletes. When Bobby Riggs met Billie Jean King in the “Battle of the Sexes” on September 20, 1973, more than 28,000 people witnessed the match at the Houston Astrodome and more than 48 million watched on TV. They saw King wallop Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King proved she had the nerve and the skills to compete under the brightest spotlight, and by offering herself up into the media frenzy, she won respect for women athletes everywhere.

1996: Team Sports Come of Age
Until recently, most well-known women athletes played individual sports, but at the 1996 Olympic Games, women’s team sports came of age. In Atlanta, soccer and softball became medal sports for the first time, joining basketball, volleyball, and field hockey. Although NBC’s TV coverage didn’t seem to reflect the popularity of these events, spectators flocked to them, and heroes including Mia Hamm, Lisa Fernandez, and Lisa Leslie emerged. So did new opportunities for team players, as U.S. Olympic triumphs in women’s softball and basketball led to new professional leagues in both sports. With the addition of women’s ice hockey to the 1998 Winter Games, it seemed clear that, for women, playing sports had finally become a group experience.

1999: Soccer Kicks It Up a Notch
For three weeks last summer, soccer fever swept through the United States, causing millions of Americans to start peppering their speech with words like headers, caps, and stoppage time. Fans crowded into stadiums and stared at their TV screens as 16 teams vied for the Women’s World Cup. The final, between the U.S. and China, attracted 90,185 spectators—more than the 1999 Super Bowl, any game of the 1999 World Series, or any other women’s sports event, ever. The fresh-faced U.S. players, who had spent years in obscurity, suddenly found themselves worshipped, imitated, and in demand to endorse everything from sports bras to skin-care products. People from Alaska to Maine shared in their triumph—and the outlook for women’s sports in the new millennium grew brighter than ever.

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