Photo courtesy of South Hadley Public Library via Picryl.com
BY GENEVIEVE ZAHNER ’26 and kate vavra ‘26
SPORTS EDITORs
Mount Holyoke College hosted a youth sports clinic for young girls and non-binary children for National Girls and Women in Sports Day, honoring the history of women’s inclusion and participation in sports.
The first professional women’s league didn’t appear until the 1940s, with the creation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II, and women were not included in the Olympics until the 1900s. Though subject to strict regulations about behavior and dress codes, what started as an effort to boost morale during the war turned into something bigger that still affects our society today.
According to an article by the Concordia University of Saint Paul’s kinesiology department, women have been subject to societal ideals and myths that prevented them from participating in elite competition spaces such as the Olympics for centuries despite having played sports since the time of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”
Certain Indigenous peoples in Africa and America allowed women to play sports as a demonstration of power or for ceremonial, religious, ritual or coming-of-age events. During the Victorian era, English women were subject to societal expectations of the time.
Women weren’t allowed to participate in sports because it was thought that their reproductive organs could be damaged, making them less appealing to men, or 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,” the Concordia University of Saint Paul reported.
Women were able to participate in the Olympic Games of 1900, but were only allowed to compete in tennis and golf. Through the years leading up to the establishment of Title-IX, they gained access to other sports such as equestrian, gymnastics, and aquatics, with the most recent added being in 2020.
Women in the 1960s and 70s saw many more athletic advancements, particularly in the Olympics, because the United States was seeking to better compete against the powerhouse athletes that the Soviet Union was sending to the Games. It would not be until Title IX, which prohibited sex-based discrimination in federally financed education programs and activities, was established in 1972 that women’s participation in sports was supported by law.
Mount Holyoke students, however, could participate in athletic competitions pre-Title IX, with the first intercollegiate sports game at MHC being played by the College’s basketball team against Radcliffe College, a fellow Seven Sister, in 1908.
In 1976, the physical education department petitioned the College to improve its athletics program by adding more staff members, editing the curriculum, improving facilities and beginning to compete against co-educational institutions, as Mount Holyoke News reported in a 2019 article providing a chronological analysis of the College’s athletics from 1837-2019.
On Saturday, Feb. 10, Mount Holyoke Athletics held a sports clinic in honor of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. Members from eight varsity teams introduced their sport to local girls and nonbinary children ages 5 to 13.
Hannah Bisson ’24, who is on the lacrosse team, was one of the varsity student-athletes who participated in the sports clinic.
“I worked with the youngest age group at the lacrosse station, and being able to expose them to sports at such a young age was exciting!” Bisson wrote in an email to Mount Holyoke News. “I would have loved to attend an event like this when I was a kid to learn how to play all different kinds of sports. I specialized in three sports in high school, but I never tried other sports to see if I liked them better. This event gave kids the opportunity to try new things and potentially develop a new passion!”
Part of the clinic’s objective was to provide representation for young athletes. When asked what makes events like this one important, Rachel Katzenburg ’25, who plays field hockey, explained that “representation matters because once we see someone like us doing it, we know we can do it as well.”
Tennis player Rachel Allen ’27 said, “I think that the day should definitely highlight and include cisgender and transgender [and] non-binary athletes. Celebrating our differences is a way to move towards a more inclusive and loving future.”