4A
Friday, October 25,1974
University Daily Kansan
Women's sports part of KU for 80 years
By KEN STONE
Sports Reporter
Women's sports at the University of Kansas conjures up images of Title IX, Marian Washington and clumsy sorority girls gimbling at flaec football.
This popular conception also assumes that women's athletics at KU is a relatively recent development—an offshoot of women's liberation and Billy Jean King.
It might surprise some people to know that the University fielded a women's basketball team in 1903, coached by James Naismith, the inventor of the game, and that women could choose among 15 sports in the intramural program during the 1920s.
KU women have had the opportunity to participate in more than 80 courses.
Consequently the history of women's athletics here is a very long one.
Until 1893 there was no organized physical education program at KU, and women weren't encouraged to develop their athletic skills. If they would have been considered unadlucky.
But in the fall of 1893 "systematic gymnastism work for men and women" was instituted, said an old Jayhawker yearbook, and women were finally "in." Indeed, in Physical Culture class was mandatory for all freshmen and sohoimores.
The first women's physical education instructor was May Clark-Pierce. She tended to embarrass her students by bringing them to wear an "abbreviated" outfit.
A newspaperman caught her class in action:
"The girls were very shy at first, in their abbreviated gowns, but now visitors are welcomed . . . Lined up in their black costumes . . . Masses, hands upon each other, masSES, hassles to prove the hill kicking high in back and front and look very enticing," he reported.
Clark-Pierce, a Harvard graduate and instructor in elocution, oratory and physical culture, was a professor of women's physical education until 1898.
Fish taught at KU until 1911.
That year Cora McCulmall-Smith took over the office in 1903, when Mary C. Fish stepped in.
In Fish's tenure here some women in the University were introduced to a new game. They called it basket ball, and the women said it so much that one group formed a team.
In 1903 a "nice gentleman" and a Miss Bennett coached the team. The gentleman was James Naismith, the founder of the game.
The first women's intercollegiate athletic team at KU played an eight-game schedule against teams representing Haskell, Ota, Baker, Washburn and Missouri.
The team's record was 6-2, and of both the
Miami Heat and Haskell. KU-2,
and Ottawa-2. KU-3.
Unfortunately, the team dissolved after that one season. KU women wouldn't play another intercollegiate basketball game for another 60 years.
Women still wanted to get involved in athletics. The P.E. department was nice, but women wanted something more. In 1912 they got it.
"The Women's Athletic Association (WAA) was organized Feb. 8, 1912. The need for such an organization was felt keenly by the women of the University, who were athletically inclined," the 1913 Jayhawker said.
Ten sports were available to the women, in basketball, baseball, football, tennis and golf.
The organization collected dues, elected officers, awarded letter swaters and had a large fundraiser.
Pratt took over for Fish in 1912 and worked to promote the WAA until, in the early '20s, it had become one of the largest groups on campus.
The WAA and its successor, the Women's
recreation Association, have provided women
with a sporting ground.
"The WAA has proved to be one of the
most successful associations on the Hill," said the 1973 Jawahram
Hazel Pratt left in 1920, and two women from the University of Illinois were hired to work as sports assistants. Her sports was Margaret Barto, and her student assistant was a young woman named Ruth
Ruth Hover succeeded Barto in the late 1900s.
Ruth Hover retired as a professor emerita in 1962 at the age of 45 after 41 years.
The WAA thrived under Hover in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. At times, more than 1,000 women and 30 sororites and residential living groups battled in 15 sports.
Every fall Hoover gave a sports banquet in the fall and awarded trophies, plaques and loving cups to the outstanding teams and individuals of the previous year.
For four decades Kappa Kappa Gamma dominated the team sports. Occasionally, it was the Kappa Beta Pi Skipped in, but the Kappas almost always ran off with the all-sports team.
Arthur "Dutch" Lonborg, a former athletic director at KU during the 1950s and 1960s, was a student here from 1916 to 1920. He said he thought that there was a slight difference between the WAA after World War I but that the WAA was consistently a popular organization.
The 1929 Jayhawker stated the situation
"Nothing typifies the complete emancipation of the modern girl from her old shackles of prudishness and ultratransference." Since she has taken in the field of athletics.
this way:
"No girl of today can carry on her social life without some knowledge of sports. No longer is it fashionable to be shrinking, or not? Can you ask dumb questions at all athletic events.
"They not only understand what they are watching, but they often know enough to
Ruth Hover organized the Quack Club in 1923 for women interested in swimming. The Quack Club annually put on a water show for the University. "
"Oh boy. Was that a job!" Hoover recalled.
The Quack Club became the Synco Club in the middle 1960s and continues to put on the show.
Women who excelled in WAA were chosen to compete as member of a class team. The team was selected from 18 women.
For the stars of the class teams, however,
the potential honor—being par-ted to the year-end
The varsity team, like the 'all-conference' selection of today, never played together except for one sport—field hockey.
KU's varsity field hockey team regularly took on teams from nearby schools in what were known as "playdays." Playdays at KU featured competition from such schools as Baker, Wichita, Hays Teachers College, University and the Kansas City Hockey Club.
In 1938 a KU playday was visited by a legend, Constance M. K. Appleby, the "Phog" Allen of American field hockey, came to officiate a series of games.
"The Apple," as she was affectionately known, introduced field hockey to American schools in the East in 1901 from Great Britain.
American teams weren't successful at hockey at first. Ruth Hower, taking a leave of absence to study at Columbia University in 1923, played on an American all-star team.
But Hover's team lost to the English in Boston.
However, a nationally rated basketball and field hockey coach, officially coached five sports as a well as teaching theory classes until her retirement in 1962.
It wasn't until 1968, when Marlene Mawson was appointed as director of women's sports, that the program got a real shot in the arm.
With Mawson came the first serious athelete to win a national title of intercollegiate athletic competitions.
sports. In 1983-1989 she coached field hockey and baseball.
sports, in "ubu-labs" we coached 'held
hockey, volleyball, basketball and softball.
"I did this on a full teaching load of nine
hours a week," Mawson said.
Mawson took a year off soon afterward to pursue a doctorate in administration of physical education at the University of Oregon.
Mawson, like Hoover, coached four or five
Anne Lapsed became the new women's sports director.
When Mawson returned, her job was split and she was put in charge of the depart- ment.
Sharon Drysdale then became the head of women's sports.
Mawson is now the coordinator of undergraduate study in the physical education department. She is also the KU voting chair for Athletics and co-conferencelogistics at collegiate Athletics for Women (AIW).
The AIAW, a national organization like the National Collegiate Athletic Association, promotes and regulates athletics at more than 500 member institutions.
KU was also a charter member of the Kansas chapter of the AIAW.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s women's uncollegiate athletics nearly dispa-
cled.
Members of KU intercollegiate teams had to contend with numerous problems.
Few coaches lasted more than one year, because all were coaching on a voluntary basis. KU teams competed as a club rather than as official University teams. Women athletes had to buy their own equipment and supply their own transportation.
The only sources of funds were the Student Senate, the KU Endowment Association and occasionally a gift from an alumnus or parent.
In 1968-69 the Senate allocated $2,000 to the Women's Sports Club. In 1970-71 the club got $2,800. Finally, in 1973-74, it received $9,300.
But in the spring of 1974 the dam broke. Responding to the federal government's call for "affirmative action," the Kansas Board of Regents asked the Kansas Legislature for $85,875. The women athletes got it.
The Senate allocated $60,000 to match the state.
With $120,000, the newly organized women's athletic department was able to pay coaches for the first time, establish a new office in the department—the assistant athletic director for women's sports, with Marian Washington as its first appointee—and pay the way for teams to compete outside the state.
Women could begin to buy better and
equipment for their families. The
Mavie team will stage large tours.
For the first time, KU women were competing on a national level rather than in local competitions.
This comes more than forty years after a
Jayhawker spoke of women’s sports in
a society that was not even able to
speak.
"Even more versatile than their sister of
antiquity are the modern 'goddesses of the
world' in a well-developed achievement of well-trained, responsive muscles.
"Their athletic pursuits have taken them into practically every field; is it preposterous to suppose that Kansas may soon have a women's football team?"
It all depends on their "athletic inclination."
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