Women and Sports

The issue of the role of women as anything other than a wife/mother certainly didn’t start in Victorian times, but it may have reached its absurdity then.

“The ideal Victorian woman was gentle and frail, and any form of strenuous activity was strongly discouraged. Myths surrounding women included those that women could harm their reproductive organs if they participated in sports, which would make them unattractive to men, and that they only had a finite amount of energy in their bodies, and wasting that energy on sports or higher education would lead to weak offspring.”

**First girls tennis team, Evansville, IN. (L-R) Sarah Blum, Anna Mae Thurgood, Agnes McConnell, Nellie Chesebro, Evaline Ellis, Marjorie Legler, Florita Eichel. September 10, 1916.** MSS 061-009, the Florita Eichel Collection.

Women first competed in the Olympics in 1900, on a very limited basis: there were 997 Olympians that year, with 22 of those women, “competing in tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf, though only golf and tennis had women-only events.” By 1972 in Rio de Janeiro, there were 90 women on the U.S. Olympic team of 428. By the 2024 Paris games, the representation was virtually equal: “some 28 of the 32 sports on the programme at Paris 2024 were fully gender equal, including athletics, boxing and cycling for the very first time.”

**Women archers compete at the 1908 London Olympics.** Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Other ‘firsts’ in women’s sports:

Oldest women’s professional sports organization is the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), founded in 1950
Women’s Tennis Association, founded in 1973
Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), founded 1996
National Women’s Soccer League, founded in 2013
National Women’s Hockey League, founded in 2015

In terms of women’s participation in school sports, including those at USI, Title IX of the Education Act of 1972 made all the difference. When it passed, “just 2% of college athletic budgets were accessible to female athletes, and women’s athletic scholarships barely existed. There were less than 30,000 women collegiate athletes in the U.S. … By 1978, Title IX compliance officially became mandatory, and the number of girls in high school sports was six times greater than in 1970. … In 2002-03, the number of American girls playing high school sports had shot to 2.8 million, up from 295,000 before Title IX.” (If you’re not familiar with Title IX, click here for a fuller explanation.)

I took a look at the USI Athletics Screaming Eagles homepage and discovered that men participate in 8 sports and women in 9. In common they have baseball/softball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, and track and field. Women also compete in volleyball. What is different is that in baseball/softball, basketball, track and field, and golf, USI men have been participating longer than USI women. (This was determined by how far back the stats went for each sport.) What’s important is that USI men and women now both compete! Enjoy these photos from UASC historic photograph collections of USI women on the sports field. (Click on the picture to see a larger image.)