Blanche Trilling and the Evils of Competition

A period of intense debate regarding competition marked the next few decades of women's athletics. The lightning rod for this controversy was basketball, one of the first true team sports for women and wildly popular from the beginning. The reaction of physical educators to basketball shaped not only the nation's understanding of women's athletic possibility, but determined the nature and tenor of college sports for decades to follow.

Just one year after basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, Senda Berenson modified the rules for women and started a team at Smith College. Women's rules divided the court into two or more zones, with two players from each team limited to each zone. Dribbling more than three times was forbidden, as was blocking, stealing the ball from another player, or holding the ball for more than three seconds.

The phenomenon caught on with astonishing rapidity. In its initial incarnation, it seemed gentile enough: with the revised rules, the game was slow-moving and more stationary, and therefore did not tax a woman's delicate system. Neither did it offend entrenched notions of femininity—except, of course, for the bloomers and stockings, scandalous enough that male spectators were barred at Smith.²² But soon enough the specter of competition raised its ugly head.

Women's basketball was introduced to Wisconsin in 1897. The first team, coached by men and women, initially played games against Milwaukee Normal School and local high school teams. Within two years, however, what we would consider a varsity squad reverted entirely to intramural play. Although this is often attributed to a lack of student time and decent coaching, it is important to note that those in power were aligning themselves against the endeavor.²³

This was a common pattern across the country: women enthusiastically embraced basketball, and quickly moved to form teams and leagues which began competing against one another. But within a very short period of time, the backlash against intercollegiate competition had gained sufficient momentum to shut down most of the established lines of competition.

The opposition to competition revolved around a few axes, none of which had very much to do with the reality of women competing athletically. First and most simply, what was seen as the inherently aggressive nature of competition clashed with notions of "ladylike" behavior, as defined by the upper-middle class. People engaged in competition often lost control in the heat of the moment, and such exertion by women was unseemly. Justifying such a position was the vague and unfounded but pervasive fear that physical activity could irreparably damage the female reproductive system.