Basketball, women's
- Origins
- Women compete
- Intercollegiate competition
- Separate rules
- Decline
Separate Rules
Playing under different sets of rules in different sized courts for women was not uncommon. Women’s basketball had three different sets of rules by the early 1920s. In 1901, Sendra Berenson, an instructor of physical culture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, who had organized the first women’s collegiate basketball match in the United States in 1893, published her rules for women’s basketball in A.G. Spalding’s first Basketball Guide for Women. Berenson’s rules, commonly referred to as Spalding Rules, became the standard for women’s basketball in universities across central and eastern Canada by 1929.
Separate rules were made for women because, at the time, females were believed to be physiologically weaker than men. Spalding Rules stipulated that a woman’s range had to be limited to within one of two or three sections on the court, depending on the size of the court and the age of the player. The men's version, meanwhile, permitted full-court play. This version tended to be played by both sexes at YMCAs and in other community leagues outside the control of physical educators in Canada.
Despite enthusiasm for basketball among all women at Mount Allison, an intercollegiate league was not formed, and regular competition with outside teams was limited by a lack of standardized regulations and equipment. In April 1912, a team representing Mount Allison, consisting of players from the University and Ladies' College, played the "Edelsteins" from Halifax at Mount Allison. The two teams realized that they played under separate rules, and so compromised by playing Halifax rules in the first half, and Mount Allison rules in the second half. A similar situation occurred in November 1912 against Acadia University, whose gymnasium in Wolfville was much larger than Mount Allison's.
Mount Allison Ladies' College basketball team, 1911
Mount Allison [Ladies' College?] basketball team, 1913
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Sackville, New Brunswick
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