March 22, 1893: First Women’s Collegiate Basketball Game

By Elizabeth Hertzler-McCain

Senda Berenson (long skirt) coaches students (short skirts) in basketball at the Alumni Gymnasium on Smith College Campus. Photo from the Smith College Archives. Source: Pinterest

On March 22, 1893, the first ever women’s college basketball game was played at Smith College, a historically women’s college in Northampton, Massachusetts. The game was played according to the rules of Athletic Director Senda Berenson. Her rules included: playing for two fifteen minute halves, dividing the court into three sections and requiring the players to stay within their assigned area, limiting the amount of time players could hold the ball, and limiting the players to only three dribbles at a time to encourage passing. Every basket earned the team one point. 

The game was a contest between members of the sophomore and first-year classes, with the sophomores taking the victory and winning a gold and white banner. Men were not allowed to watch the game, yet the gym was packed with Smith students from all class years, jubilantly cheering on their classmates. 

Senda Berenson learned the game of basketball from Dr. James Naismith less than two years after he initially developed the game in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and adapted her rules for women in order to limit physical contact and reduce overall physical exertion. Berenson’s rules for basketball quickly spread to other women’s colleges across the country and the sport of women’s college basketball flourished, the first intercollegiate game taking place in 1896. 

Smith College women’s basketball team, circa 1896. Photo: Bettman Archive/Getty Images. Source: History.com

While Berenson’s version of basketball, with its rules meant to encourage womanliness and ladylike deportment, was eventually put aside in favor of a version with rules almost identical to the men’s game, Berenson’s mark on basketball has not been forgotten. 

When the WNBA was formed in 1996, the league paid homage to this first ever women’s game at Smith College and its inventor, Senda Berenson. In a commemorative program released to celebrate the WNBA’s first season, Berenson was named as the first among women’s basketball pioneers and in a timeline of women’s basketball history, she was given the first slot. 

In 1985, Senda Berenson was the first female inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and in 1999, Berenson was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Story prepared by Zinn Education Project intern Elizabeth Hertzler-McCain.