10. Women's Athletics at Madison
and Title IX
by Kit Saunders
The initiation of basketball at Smith College in 1892, soon after the
game was invented, introduced the element of competition and a whole new
era of sports for women.' Opposition by women physical educators was im-
mediate and intercollegiate sport for women became an issue which was to
be
pursued and debated until the present day.2
There were probably two issues involved. One was that fierce competi-
tion for women was antithetical to the victorian ideal of how a woman should
behave. The second issue which immediately concerned physical educators
was that concentration on a few skilled players would lead to the neglect
of
many lesser skilled individuals as well as to commercialization of the competi-
tive activities. Given the early uncontrolled development of men's athletics,
women educators had good reason for some of their fears.
The development of women's athletics at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison has reflected the national trends and philosophies. An early form
of
intercollegiate competition was the playday, in which teams from different
colleges mixed for competition; beginning in the late 1920s, by 1936 the
playday was the competitive mode used in many American colleges and
universities. Next came sports days which permitted teams from different
schools to compete against each other.3 These teams however had limited
practice and coaching.
Although male historians have held that women have had no inter-
collegiate sport history, Ellen Gerber points out that it is an error to
discount
these other legitimate forms of intercollegiate competition. Gerber asserts
that
this attitude has been responsible for a great deal of ignorance about the
history of women in sports.4
The playday, sports day phenomena, also occurred at the University of
Wisconsin. As early as the 1890s there was interest on the part of women,
and in 1895 Coach Andrew O'Dea consented to coach the ladies' boating
crew. Women's basketball was introduced at Wisconsin in 1897, coached by
both men and women. Games were held against the Milwaukee Normal team
and several high school teams. Lack of sufficient coaching and practice time
soon discouraged this interschool competition, and within two years the com-
petition became interclass.5 And so it remained, basically, for over sixty
years.
Badger yearbooks from before 1920 show women's teams, women receiving
honor letters and wearing athletic sweaters with the year of their accomplish-
ment, but these were interclass teams and not intercollegiate teams.
By the end of the century athletics for men had become firmly estab-
lished at UW. The faculty had reluctantly moved to establish eligibility
rules,
and had helped to create an association with other universities in an attempt
to control the conditions of intercollegiate competition among its members.
This became the Western Conference of Faculty Representatives, or the Big
Ten Conference. The basic pattern had been set.6 The next years were to un-


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