page_title: Senda Berenson Abbott
section_title: Women's basketball origins
hierarchical_section_title: Senda Berenson Abbott / Women's basketball origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Smith College basketball tickets, issued for interclass women's basketball games in 1897 and 1900.
context_page_description: Senda Berenson Abbott was a figure of women's basketball and the author of the first Basketball Guide for Women. She was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor on July 1, 1985, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.
  Berenson was the first person to introduce and adapt rules for women's basketball to Smith College in 1899, modifying the existing men's rules.
  Abbott was the sister of the art historian Bernard Berenson and a great-great-aunt of Berry Berenson and Marisa Berenson.
context_section_description: Known as the Mother of Women's Basketball, Berenson became the first woman enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985.
  In 1892, after Berenson realized that the gymnastic exercises were not as popular as she had originally thought, she looked for alternatives. She read about the new game of basketball, invented by James Naismith, in the YMCA publication Physical Education. Group games were "unheard of" at Smith, but she felt this would be an interesting experiment. Other attempts at teaching games had not succeeded, in part because the women of that time had no experience with team play. Initial games were played in class in the spring of 1892. The exact date of the first informal game is not known, but one student wrote to her mother on March 6, 1892, describing a new game they were playing, in which the object was to put a ball into your opponent's basket, as "great fun".  Instead of the peach baskets used in the first men's game, the goals in the first women's game were fashioned from waste baskets.
  The response was so positive that she scheduled a game between the freshman and sophomore classes. That game, played March 22, 1893, was also played with Naismith rules. The players wore bloomers, and no men were admitted to the event. The players all wore blue uniforms, adorned by an armband with the color associated with their class. The spectators wore the class colors, green for the sophomore class of 1895, and lavender, for the freshman class of 1896. When Berenson tossed the ball between the two opposing centers, she struck the outstretched arm of the freshman team's center, dislocating her shoulder. The start of this game was delayed while they attended to the distressed player and arranged for a substitute. The New York Herald reported five days later that "[i]n spite of the fact that the sophomore captain was disabled at the beginning of the game, the score was 5-4 in favor of the sophomores after a close contest of two 15-minute halves."
  Despite her unflagging efforts to support physical education for young women, Berenson did not encourage inter-scholastic games. In her words, "We should encourage the instinct of play, not competition." This set a precedent for the non-participation in interscholastic events which would be followed for many years. While competition with other schools was discouraged, she did promote competition among classes and established a tradition of interclass games. The atmosphere at the games was noisy, but enthusiasm was expressed by singing. Shouting would result in the discontinuance of the game.
  Berenson had introduced the game as an experiment, so she sought to determine how the students reacted to the game. She polled her students, and all but one felt they had improved in many areas, including "endurance, lung capacity, alertness, courage, [and] toughness". One student reported that the game brought her "health, wealth and happiness", the second of which was attributed to lower doctor bills. The early game followed different rules than are followed today, as evidenced by a play dreamed up by one of the freshmen on the first teams: 
   She threw a low ball against the wall at such an angle that it bounded back into the hands of one of her own players who was watching for it
caption: College basketball tickets, issued for interclass women's basketball games in 1897 and 1900.
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