Not Altogether Ladylike
The Premature Demise of Girls' Interscholastic Basketball in Illinois

By SCOTT JOHNSON
Illinois High School Association

Overview

Not long after the introduction of basketball as an athletic activity for high school girls, all levels of the educational hierarchy were engaged in a debate over its merits. As a simple playground game, girls' basketball had prompted few objections. However, when girls started developing interscholastic programs that rivaled those of the boys, basketball quickly turned into a nightmare for school administrators. While students and sympathetic teachers pushed for more interschool play, school principals and professional educators marshaled their resistance to what they perceived as the masculinization of the female athletic program.

This scenario played itself out in practically every state during the early twentieth century, but perhaps nowhere so early as in Illinois. The girls' basketball revolution started in Illinois in 1895, and within a dozen years developed into a statewide network that included teams at up to 300 high schools. In basketball, at least, high school girls became the athletic equals of boys — forming teams and leagues, scheduling games and transportation, issuing challenges and upholding school pride. Girls' teams received broad support from the student body, both male and female, and uniformly positive reviews from the popular press. Perhaps because girls' athletics was new and exciting, many of these teams received public attention that outstripped their male counterparts.

Not surprisingly, many school administrators saw dubious value in young ladies acting like young men. They were joined in their fight against girls' interscholastics by many female physical educators who believed in the importance of athletics for girls but not when it meant duplicating the objectionable aspects of the male athletic model. The opposing forces gathered steam slowly, but eventually they were able to install a ban on all interscholastic competition among high school girls. The first incarnation of girls' interscholastic basketball in Illinois was dead in 1907.

If the time frame that distinguishes the rise and fall of girls' interscholastic basketball in Illinois is somewhat unusual, the underlying conditions are not. The same circumstances that gave rise to the early development and demise of girls' interscholastic basketball in Illinois soon appeared throughout the country, and Illinois' precedent-setting ban later served as a model for high school administrators in other states. Understanding the situation in Illinois, then, paves the way for understanding the nationwide backlash against interscholastic sports for girls in the early part of this century.

Wonder what girls' basketball looked like in 1904? 
Check out this fascinating video at the Library of Congress site.

Introduction and Growth

Soon after its beginnings at the International YMCA Training School in 1891, the game of basketball split into two branches that developed more or less independently. The male branch spread quickly throughout the nationwide network of YMCA's and athletic clubs, eventually filtering down to colleges and high schools. Men's basketball was a player's game in the early days. For the first decade or so, team members exercised almost complete control over the sport — organizing matches and leagues, financing their teams' operation, and generally operating outside the watchful eye of any higher authority like a faculty board. Despite the popularity of football and baseball, the player's passion for basketball steadily built the new sport into a new national pastime.

Women's basketball followed quite a different path. Since women had no comparable network of athletic clubs and no real tradition of organizing athletic teams for their own enjoyment, the players themselves had very little to do with the development of the game. Instead, the impetus came from educators in women's colleges and normal schools, who saw basketball not so much as a game but as an educational tool. Because the value of sports for women and the value of competition for women was under debate, the faculty of these schools — including those educators who supported the athletic movement — generally imposed strict controls on the types of games their students could play. The result of these manipulations was that at many institutions women's basketball soon generated a political crisis over what role, if any, the athletes should have in determining the nature of their own athletic competition.

In Illinois, women's basketball started as a faculty experiment. The first mention of the game is at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, where a professor named Delmar Darrah introduced the sport in 1893. Appointed to take charge of the physical education program, Darrah discovered the game in an athletic journal and introduced it to his students. Basketball was so popular among the women that Darrah was soon asked to pass on his knowledge of the game at the Illinois State Normal University (now Illinois State University at Normal) and at Millikin University in Decatur.

Not surprisingly, faculty involvement in women's basketball was uncontroversial until the women displayed a willingness to play teams from other schools. The first such conflict occurred at Lake Forest University (now College) soon after basketball arrived there in 1895. Unlike the situation at the other colleges, there is no indication that any faculty member had a hand in introducing basketball at Lake Forest. Instead, the students at Ferry Hall, the girls' preparatory and seminary department of the college, broached the subject in the student newspaper with the simple question, "Why don't we play basket ball?" It appears that interest in women's physical education at Lake Forest was so low that the college women even had to petition the faculty in order to use the gymnasium and engage an outside physical education instructor. Nevertheless, students from both Ferry Hall and Mitchell Hall (the college women) were practicing basketball within a few months, with the goal of forming teams and playing each other.

Subsequent newspaper reports, the earliest detailed accounts of basketball games in Illinois, provide a glimpse of the spectacle of women's and girls' athletics. In the student paper, the Stentor, the description of the first game between the two halls indicated that "the two factions of girls within made use of their lungs by giving lusty yells for their respective sides, while the male student element was well represented without in the street." A long report of the game also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and the phenomenon at Lake Forest was editorialized in the New York Sun. "This almost makes up for the deficiency of the boys' athletic teams these latter days," the Stentor reported, with a jab that must have bruised male egos all over campus.

The game itself was quite rugged by the standards of the day. One college woman suffered a sprained ankle and was forced to retire, and accusations of unnecessary roughness flew back and forth between the teams after the game. Before the much-awaited rematch, an obviously male reporter for the student paper promised that "a full and complete list of the dead and injured will be found in the Stentor next week."

The Mitchell Hall women had plans to play games against University of Chicago and Austin High School, which had organized teams about the same time, but the aftermath of the second game ended any immediate hope of interschool athletics for the women and girls at Lake Forest. Amid charges of slugging and the slapping of faces, the Tribune reported that "the statement that fouls were overlooked caused the feeling of rivalry among the girls to wax dangerous, and there is little hope of a breach in the émeute." A few days later, the faculty determined that the teams would not be allowed to play outsiders.

Similar complications arose at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. In 1900, for example, at a time when the university men could not muster enough players to form a varsity basketball team, 300 women were involved in intramural basketball at the university. The faculty was apparently not impressed by this show of enthusiasm, however, and denied their request to play intercollegiate games and earn a letter.

Despite these setbacks, interschool competition did take place in Illinois: not in the colleges, but in the high schools, where girls' basketball was introduced about the same time as at Lake Forest. In contrast to the situation in the colleges, the high schools put no systematic restriction on interscholastic competition, and in fact, many of the schools seemed to encourage outside games.

Austin High School was the first to organize a team, sometime in 1895 according to an article published five years later. The team's first extramural game, with a team from Hull House, occurred on March 12, 1896, only five days after the riotous second game at Lake Forest. The Austin-Hull House game was different from the Lake Forest games in several important respects. For one thing, it was not as rough — the Tribune reported that "basket ball when played by these maidens of 16 resembles the game played by the other sex about as much as a gentle spring zephyr resembles a Kansas cyclone." For another, Austin had a male coach, a player from the excellent Chicago Central YMCA team. And for the first time, male spectators, including possibly the Tribune reporter, were allowed to attend. This pattern held throughout the next decade in Illinois; men were generally barred from attending games involving college women, but not those involving high school girls.

Interestingly, the girls involved in this game were aware that by offering themselves to the public they were setting a precedent, and they took every precaution not to appear foolish. The Austin girls had played an intramural scrimmage a few days before and had sworn their classmates to secrecy because "we were afraid a reporter would come and say horrid things about our costumes." It was also important not to appear too audacious. The Hull House coach, Miss Gyles, admonished the Tribune reporter that "if the papers write up exaggerated accounts I am afraid my girls, who have no desire to pose as new women, will discontinue the game."

The difference in philosophy toward interschool competition is probably best explained by the organization of athletics in the colleges and high schools themselves. At the colleges, the women's basketball programs were part of the physical education department and usually directed by women who were trained as physical educators. At the high schools, the teams were organized as clubs, outside the formal authority of the school, and when coached at all were almost always guided by men who had no training in either physical education or coaching. The girls' teams were financed by the girls themselves, and run just like any other student organization, with a full slate of officers and an independent budget.

The high school system was therefore not bound by the restrictions that confined women's basketball in the colleges, and it grew exponentially in the following decade. Within a few years, most of the large schools in and around Chicago had girls' basketball teams that competed interscholastically. Oak Park and Austin met in a four-game series during the 1896-97 school year; late in the season there was already talk that these two schools, along with Evanston and Englewood, would form a girls' basketball league. When a league finally did develop in 1900, four Chicago schools (Austin, Englewood, Hyde Park, and West Division) played a double round-robin schedule to determine a champion. Remarkably, all this took place at a time when there were less than a handful of Illinois high schools that fielded basketball teams for boys.

Basketball provided a welcome relief from the boredom of the typical girls' athletic program, and this simple fact surely accounted for its sudden and immense popularity among high school girls. In the Chicago public schools, physical education had become mandatory in 1889, even before the district's first gymnasium was built at Northwest Division (later Tuley, now Clemente) High School. Describing a typical girls' athletic regimen, an article in the Tribune in 1896 related that "for at least one hour every day the girls swing clubs, lift dumb-bells, climb around on ladders, and vault over wooden horses . . . to cultivate strength, while light calisthenics and Delsarte drills are added to give grace to their movements." Written just after the first girls' games played in public, the article also noted, without further elaboration, that "the girls have succumbed to the fascination of basket ball."

The student publications of the era provide firsthand evidence of this fascination and of the eagerness with which girls embraced the new game. "What girl would not be inspired and feel herself two inches higher in her boots, when told that she was going to learn 'boys' games!'" asked a West Division High School student in 1899. The Ferry Hall girls, who after the introduction of basketball had rapidly come to dislike the iron pillars that studded their tiny gym, composed a lengthy ode to the sport that besought the school's prosperous alumnae: "O, thou pitying reader, who hast gold / Please die and give us a gymnasium."

Over the next few years the basketball girls of Illinois compiled a string of revolutionary feats and expanded the role of interscholastic athletics in the high school curriculum. At many schools the girls' basketball program was the second most popular athletic activity, behind the football team. Boys' basketball gradually caught up to the girls' programs at many schools, but there was apparently little rivalry between them. The girls' games had become a normal part of high school social life.

The Cook County girls' basketball league is perhaps the best example of how far the game allowed girls to deviate from accepted norms of feminine behavior. For example, the league teams never played "line ball," the specially modified version of basketball we now know as "girls' rules." Invented by Senda Berenson, a physical educator at Smith College, line ball passed through the academic network and was well established at some of the local colleges by 1900. Predictably, the high school girls refused to accept the college model. Despite pleas from administrators, the girls of the Cook County League played boys' rules throughout the league's existence. Some teams accepted the "non-interference" modification that prevented a player from snatching the ball from another player's hands, but even this was too genteel for one University High School player, who complained, "This 'non-interference' game is altogether too ladylike."

From the original four teams in 1900, the Cook County League gradually expanded to include a high of eleven teams in 1905, comprising Oak Park and ten Chicago schools: Austin, Calumet, Englewood, Hyde Park, Jefferson (now Schurz), Lake (now Tilden), McKinley, Medill, Phillips, and South Chicago (now Bowen). At the time, the Cook County League was the most important high school athletic conference in the state, hosting championships in seven different sports.

Even barnstorming tours were not uncommon for the girls' teams, and some of these trips were cultural exchanges worthy of local headlines. As early as 1902, a team from West Division High School traveled across the state to Moline to play two games. Between matches, the girls were entertained in private homes and treated to a tour of the Tri-Cities. The championship team from Oak Park topped that feat in 1906 when it traveled to St. Louis and Springfield to play three games in three days, managing to squeeze in an audience with the Governor of Illinois along the way. Of course, sometimes barnstorming meant just that, as in 1908 when the team from DeKalb High School hopped a train to St. Charles on a moment's notice to play in the loft of a barn, complete with stove and trap door.

Somewhat surprisingly, the press was unflagging in its support for girls' interscholastic basketball, from the high school monthlies right up to the big city dailies. "We are glad to see such a great number of our young ladies . . . playing the game," an Elgin High School editor commented in 1900, adding that "it is the only exercise that has thus far been found that most girls can indulge in." A writer for the Hinsdale newspaper exhorted his readers to attend an early game with Aurora East High School: "The game will be watched with anxious interest by all. . . . Everybody come and get your money's worth!"

The big Chicago newspapers regarded the initial women's games at Lake Forest and the University of Chicago with paternalistic amusement, but they soon began covering these events as they would any other. Basketball did not merit much coverage around the turn of the century, but women's and girls' games received their fair share of it. During the 1900 season, for example, there were numerous summaries of high school girls' league games in the Tribune, often accompanied by the lineups for each team. In addition, the Tribune published two long overviews of girls' basketball.

In one of these articles, Frances Kellor described the state of the sport at Chicago's high schools and colleges. Kellor, who found time to coach the girls' team at Hyde Park High School while doing graduate work at the University of Chicago, seemed to support interscholastic play in this essay, explaining that women do not patronize football games as often as men wished because "games and the competitive spirit do not arouse the loyalty and interest which would exist if they knew the experience of playing." Before she made her name as a social reformer and arbitrator, Kellor would have more to say about girls' athletics.

Throughout the local coverage of girls' basketball it is difficult to find any words of disparagement. The Inter-Ocean and Tribune published photographs of girls' teams on occasion, the latter once helping to set up an intersectional game between a team from Dwight High School and the Cook County League champions from Oak Park. In 1905, when the Tribune began publishing a weekly summary of high school sports that included the standings of the various leagues in tabular format, the girls' basketball league was included.

By 1906, girls' basketball played an important role in the social and athletic programs at many high schools in Illinois and, not coincidentally, commanded a good deal of popular support. The programs were self-sufficient and the players were enthusiastic. But there were clouds on the horizon. Administrators were bothered that the girls insisted on playing boys' rules and practiced in dilapidated halls, sometimes against boys' teams. And they were infuriated that the girls were coached by men and played before sometimes rowdy crowds of men and boys. Backed by growing support in the academic community, they were poised to take control of what they perceived as a dangerous situation.

Opposition and Collapse

The Illinois High School Athletic Association was founded at a rump session of the Illinois State Teachers' Association in 1900. Of foremost concern to the committee were the problems that football, which had become enormously popular at high schools during the 1890's, posed to the educational well-being of these institutions. The consensus was that interscholastic athletics had the potential to be a positive tool, but only if they could be brought under faculty control. The group drew up a list of guidelines that covered the conduct of interscholastic sport and addressed, among other things, the issues of eligibility and physical certification. With only a few members, however, the IHSAA had little power to enforce these rules.

There is no indication that either boys' or girls' basketball were discussed at this meeting nor any reason to believe that they were. The evils of football were serious enough — dozens of students were being killed each year on the gridiron — that President Theodore Roosevelt was forced to step into the picture a few years later to clean house. It is likely that the organization overlooked girls' basketball for the first few years, until most high schools were fielding teams and it was clear that the sport had joined the boys' sports as an accepted element of high school life.

Although the players, students, and the press were enthusiastic about girls' basketball, one group that occasionally registered mild objections to interscholastic games were the parents of the girls involved. As early as 1897, a game at Evanston was restricted to invited guests only "owing to the opposition of the young ladies' parents to a public exhibition." Reports of such objections were rare, however.

By far the strongest objections to interschool play came from professional physical educators. Frances Kellor, who had witnessed firsthand the formation of the Cook County League, later became one of the influential voices who argued against interscholastics for girls. She summarized her thoughts on the subject at a conference on physical education in 1906:

"The principals underlying [women's sports] must differ from those which are carried out in men's sports to-day. . . . These essential principals are:

1. Sports must be conducted for the good of the number, and not for the purpose of getting good material for championship teams. . . .
2. The predominating note in women's sports should always be the joy and exhilaration and fun of playing, not the grim determination to win at any cost. . . .
3. Women's games are for themselves and for their school or college. With few exceptions, the standards of women's athletic contests do not possess sufficient educational value to justify giving them before indiscriminate audiences who pay admission fees.

Kellor's opinions constituted a refinement and not a reversal of the sentiments expressed in her newspaper article six years earlier. Having coached the interscholastic team at Hyde Park for a least one year, Kellor was drawing on her own experiences and not addressing the question in the abstract. Whether her experiences in Chicago convinced her that girls' interscholastics were harmful is unknown. But even though she had relocated to New York, her opinion presumably carried a weight in her former city and among old friends.

At the same conference, Elma L. Warner revealed the conclusions of a survey she had made of girls' interscholastic athletics. Among other things, she found that:

• "The faculty of each school show only slight interest in the girls' games. . . . In a season of inter-school games I have seen but three teachers and one principal at a game."
• "In the majority of cases, a girl's mother has never seen a game of basketball, . . . and when she does witness a game, expresses strong disapproval. . . ."
• "The press, like the poor, are always with us; and our girls receive a certain kind of notoriety from notices and pictures, which cannot be recommended."

In stating her case, Warner enumerated some of the most flagrant problems with girls' interscholastic basketball: poorly trained coaches (usually male), lack of chaperones, the use of men's rules, and the "vulgar display of partisanship" at games. She was less concerned about the physical outcome of competition, even though it included "the usual strained muscles, bumps and bruises, sometimes faintness, hysteria or melancholy." Warner's unequivocal recommendation was that playing interscholastic games was not beneficial under the existing circumstances.

The addresses from the New York conference, printed in the American Physical Education Review, undoubtedly helped turn the tide of professional opinion against girls' interscholastics. In Illinois, the first official objection to girls' basketball appeared in January 1906, at the height of the Cook County League's popularity. As the girls were preparing that year's schedule, several of the principals came out strongly against the formation of the league. They were said to be backed by Edwin G. Cooley, the Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, who had swept into office in 1900 as a reformer. In 1901, Cooley had rebuffed a few of his principals by refusing the Rooseveltian option of either banning football or rewriting its rules. Cooley's goal was the control, not the abolition, of high school athletics, and in 1904 he finally succeeded in removing the last vestiges of student management by eliminating their representatives from the league's board of control. At the same time, he was given full authority over the league, with the power to suspend any member of any team.

In speaking out against girls' basketball, the principals had determined that "the long series of games is too trying on the girls, and . . . bad effects always result from the long continued strain." Despite the pronouncement, the girls' league limped forward in 1906 with only five teams. But the edict stuck in 1907, and from then on girls in Chicago's public high schools were allowed to play only non-league games.

At the same time, the IHSAA was preparing to deal with the situation in its member schools. The IHSAA had no control over the Chicago high schools, which were not members of the association, but did claim a membership of up to 300 schools outside the city. There is no evidence to link the ban on girls' basketball in Chicago with the larger ban imposed by the IHSAA in 1907, but one can surmise that the Chicago ban had a emboldening effect on the state's principals. At the time the larger high schools of the state made up a disproportionate percentage of the IHSAA membership, and these urban schools were more likely than rural schools to follow the Chicago model.

In November 1907, the IHSAA met in conference and decided to bar girls at schools under its jurisdiction from competing against teams from other schools in basketball. The IHSAA's official report cited the following reasons for the ban:

"After several years of experimenting the committee has decided to rule that the high school girls of this state who are under the supervision of this association should not appear before the public promiscuously in interscholastic basketball games. The game is altogether too masculine and has met with much opposition on the part of parents. The committee finds that roughness is not foreign to the game, and that the exercise in public is immodest and not altogether ladylike."

Furthermore, according to the Tribune:

"The report goes on to state that the costumes are too "circusy" for high school girls; [and] that the record of blackened eyes, scratched countenances, and bruised limbs of the last season is an argument against the game as far as the lassies are concerned."

It is possible that other, less altruistic, motives were involved. As Janice Beran noted in her study of girls' interscholastics in Iowa, the simultaneous growth of girls' and boys' basketball provided plenty of competition for indoor facilities during the winter months and a convenient excuse for shutting down girls' programs. In Illinois, this competition was a problem from the very first games at Lake Forest, after which a male student complained in a letter to the editor of the student newspaper that "since the girls have taken up basket-ball and rented all available lockers several men have been unable to let lodgings for their gymnasium outfits."

Other than IHSAA's official announcement, there is no contemporaneous record of the reasons for the ban or the attitudes of the members who voted for it. But correspondence after the ban is consistent with the 1907 announcement, suggesting that the IHSAA was primarily concerned with the perils of public exhibition:

• "[Interscholastic basketball games] usually occur with spectators, some of whom at least, do not have the highest ideal in such a situation. Such games are destructive to the highest ideals of the girls themselves and encourage crudities of speech and thought on the part of spectators which should be discouraged."
• "If you have these public girls' contests you will undoubtedly sooner or later have an unsatisfactory situation arise which will not be to your liking."

The IHSAA was probably stating its objections truthfully in these letters. If an announcement that girls' interscholastics were being eliminated because the uniforms were too circusy was considered acceptable in 1907, an announcement that the move was being made in order to make more room for the boys would surely have been equally acceptable. And to its credit, the organization never made any attempt to abolish the girls' intramural programs that flourished after the ban, even though they must also have put a strain on facilities.

Although the intention of the ban — the outright abolition of interscholastic activity — was clear, the repercussions varied widely. At Lincoln, where the girls had played outdoors during the fall months and expected a rousing season, "all games on the Lincoln high school schedule [were] cancelled" and the girls were "not feeling in very amiable moods," according to a newspaper report. But at DeKalb the 1907-08 season was played out. The yearbook reported that "at the beginning of the season, on account of the newspaper talk, basket ball seemed to be out of the question for the girls. But things brightened somewhat and after some difficulty, a few games were scheduled." DeKalb had been a member of the IHSAA, and it is not known under what circumstances these games came to be played. In any case, 1908 was the last year for girls' interscholastic basketball at the school.

Sporadic reports of interscholastic games, which continued for several years after the ban, indicate that there was plenty of confusion about who made the rules and what exactly the rules were. For instance, after a girl fainted during a game between high school teams from Batavia and Wheaton in 1911, parents called for a ban on girls' basketball, apparently unaware that the match had taken place in flagrant violation of just such a ban.

The loss of interscholastic basketball was a monumental setback for the girls who had pioneered the game. Through basketball, they had been able to define their own roles in the school and the community. As one West Division girl, pondering the crusade for basketball, had remarked in 1900, "We have accomplished one of our aims made at the start: to further athletics among the girls and accordingly rest content on that score." Interscholastic basketball had given these girls not only exercise but also social interaction and organizational experience. The shock was of losing the game was deep and genuine, since on a emotional level basketball easily aroused as much enthusiasm among girls as any other extracurricular activity schools offered.

Perhaps the most poignant reminder of the passing of the basketball era is buried in the pages of the Springfield High School newspaper, where the girls lamented their loss with a full-page epitaph:

In Memoriam Girls' Basket Ball Died In the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eight

Postscript

The Illinois High School Athletic Association's ban against girls' interscholastics in 1907 did not put the issue of girls' interscholastics to rest. The minutes of the 1909 board meeting at Springfield indicate that "after a very spirited discussion about girls' interscholastic basket ball games, it was decided that the rules should stand." For the next several years, one school or another proposed amending or deleting the ban, but these proposals were never acted upon.

The ban was poorly understood and unevenly enforced until well into the 1920's. The IHSA's files are filled with letters from high school principals, most of them at rural schools that opened their doors after 1907, inquiring about the possibility of their girls playing interscholastic basketball. The first such letter posed the question succinctly: "If Girls [sic] Teams may belong to Association with whom are they to play?"

It was the hope of the association that the girls would play intramural games, but at many of the smallest schools in Illinois this proved impractical or impossible. Throughout the 1910's and 1920's there are numerous reports of schools skirting the IHSAA ban by organizing a few of their girls and one or two graduates into "town teams" or "independent teams" that would play other teams of similar composition. The IHSAA took a dim view of this sort of chicanery. One important case, probably the last of its kind, involved five small high schools south of Springfield in 1927. Charles W. Whitten, Manager of the IHSAA, spoke for the organization in a letter to one of the principals:

"Our Board has repeatedly ruled that any athletic games between teams made up wholly or in part of girls from two different high schools violate both the letter and the spirit of our rule. This is particularly true if the teams are sponsored or coached by any high school teacher, if the games are held in the high school or if they are in any way recognized by the high school authorities. . . ."

"Of course, from the ethical viewpoint, such an evasion is more demoralizing than an open flouting of the rule for it indicates a disposition to violate the rule without the courage to openly violate it. It might be called a sort of "athletic bootlegging."

The IHSAA used this case and others like it to promote the Illinois League of High School Girls' Athletic Associations, its official athletic program for girls. Ironically, interscholastics was one of the needs that the ILHSGAA had hoped to address when it was founded at another rump session of the High School Conference in 1919. Originally it had no connection with the IHSAA, but in 1923 Whitten made overtures toward a merger. Once again, control of girls' interscholastics were foremost in his mind:

"Just now I am having trouble in enforcing Section 6, Article II of enclosed By-Laws [the ban on girls' interscholastics]. I would like to get your opinion . . . : Would the organization of branches of your association in offending schools, which, by the way, are nearly all small schools, have a tendency to obviate our difficulties?"

The associations struck a deal. Through its own extensive network of schools, the IHSAA began promoting the girls' organization, which was having trouble attracting new members. In return, Whitten became a member of the board of directors of the ILHSGAA and the girls' organization added a provision to its constitution that prohibited teams from engaging in interscholastic competition. The IHSAA took over financial sponsorship of the ILHSGAA in 1927 and formally absorbed it in 1945. Soon after the initial agreement, the IHSAA lifted its total ban on girls' interscholastics, but only for the non-contact sports of golf, archery, and tennis.

Whitten, who also served as the first executive officer of the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations, undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in preserving the ban as far as contact sports were concerned. Whitten was dubious of the advertised values of interscholastic athletics in general, but he was especially adamant that girls' programs should never have to make the compromises that boys' programs made in the name of tradition — particularly where it concerned "athletics for the few." The all-male voting membership of the IHSAA, made up of the state's high school principals, was a fertile ground for Whitten's notions about female sport, some of which he published in 1950 in his magnum opus, Interscholastics. A brief sample indicates that his ideas about women were strictly of the old school:

"Athletic exercises for girls should be designed to promote not only exhilarating health and physical strength, but also that modesty and restraint of bearing and dignity which we covet for our girls and women. . . ."

"I recently read a brief from a book written by an outstanding woman physician who maintains that neuroticism among women, amounting in many instances to a psychosis, is fast becoming a menace to our civilization. She attributes the disorder largely to the apparently intense desire of women to equal men in all fields of endeavor — political, commercial, professional, literary, athletic, what not. . . . "

"Certainly we might do well to consider whether it is any more desirable to educate our girls to become masculine than to develop a strain of effeminacy in our boys. Let's have manly men, neither "sissies" nor prigs, and womanly women, neither amazons, nor neurotics."

Although the IHSAA's constitutional prohibition of girls' interscholastics was an anomaly for many years, other state associations eventually climbed on the bandwagon. Lewis Hoch Wagenhorst's comprehensive study of the national status of interscholastic athletics noted that Illinois stood alone in its intransigence for many years until it was joined by Nebraska in 1924. At the opposite end of the spectrum, seven states (mostly in the southeast) still held state championship tournaments for girls' basketball teams at the time of the study (1926). Wagenhorst went on to cite several authorities — including the recent consensus of the Conference on Athletics and Physical Recreation for Women and Girls — whose opinions on girls' interscholastics clearly indicate that the Illinois model was the wave of the future among state associations. The rise to prominence of the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation, a organization dedicated to eliminating male domination of the female athletic agenda, also helped ring out girls' interscholastics in many states.

Against this backdrop, the fight to restore girls' basketball in Illinois died out for a couple of decades. High school girls interested in basketball during this period were limited to intramural games, pick-up games at play days, and telegraphic basket-shooting contests, or forced outside the school entirely into municipal or church leagues.

The question was revived in the 1950's, but it was not until 1973, when the sanctions of Title IX legislation were imminent, that the IHSA's ban was finally lifted. In 1998, almost 19,000 Illinois high school girls participated in interscholastic basketball programs at 638 schools.

Acknowledgments

This paper was originally presented at the annual meeting of the North American Society for Sport History in May, 1991.

The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to Bob Pruter for his loyal assistance and encouragement.

Thanks are also due to Professor Axel Bundgaard, Professor Janice Beran, Jim Flynn of the Illinois High School Association, Chuck Dayton, and Henry Mayes.

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Footnotes available on request. Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.