The Birth of the Women's Athletic Association (continued)

The WAA also sponsored the popular Field Day events. Began in the late 1910s as an interclass track and field meet, Field Day soon became the championship forum for all interclass and intramural outdoor sports, including archery, tennis, and baseball. No admission was charged, and no bleachers were erected for the event, ensuring that participants and observers would co-mingle on the field. Dance Drama, which grew out of the May Fete, was another feature of Field Days; it was so popular that it later gained its own theatre venue. In the mid-1920s, Field Day became part of the Mother's (later Parent's) Weekend.

The WAA was an active fundraiser for its many clubs and activities. The first County Fair was held in 1912, in which the gymnasium was transformed via saw dust, booths, and tents into a fairground. Wiskits (originally Wisconsin Skits), a popular talent competition open to all university women, also had its start as a WAA fundraiser.

In one of its largest fundraising drives, the group raised $3,500 and secured a 99-year lease from the Board of Regents to build a cottage on Lake Mendota, on the Eagle Heights tract. It opened in 1925 and was a popular destination for many year-round outdoor activities and overnight ventures. Unfortunately, the cottage was used for less than fifteen years before falling prey to increasing vandalism and decreasing interest. It became the property of the Union and Black Hawk Lodge, as it was then known, became a "drop-in" shelter for all students engaging in outdoor activities. It eventually closed for good in 1948.

Not coincidentally, the WAA came into its own after the university hired Blanche Trilling to head the physical education department. Trilling, who had been the Director of Physical Education at Chicago Normal School (later Chicago Teacher's College), arrived at Wisconsin in 1912. She left an indelible mark on the school and on the direction and organization of women's sports nationwide. A colleague once remarked of Trilling that a list of her accomplishments "would mean enumeration of almost every important advance in Physical Education."¹⁸ Under her care, the department expanded, the fledgling professional course matured, and the number of activities multiplied.

Trilling's position on fitness and sports was expansively optimistic, braided through with notions of morality, good citizenship, and inclusiveness: "A sound constitution, a good understanding, a benevolent heart, an honest and upright personality, these are the characteristics which physical education, if wisely administered, may develop in an individual . . . . May we never fail to maintain them, while working always for an increased and more efficient activity which, if it come to perfection, can never perish, but will instead go on upbuilding the physical and moral fiber of a great people!"¹⁹ This enthusiastic attitude was the foundation for women's athletics at Wisconsin for the next four decades.