“Loosen your girdle and let ‘her fly!” Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

In the spirit of Women’s History Month, we’ve compiled a list of fun facts about women and sports – enjoy!

1. 776 B.C. – The first Olympics are held in ancient Greece. Women are excluded, so they compete every four years in their own Games of Hera, to honor the Greek goddess who ruled over women and the earth.
2. 1552 – Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87), an avid golfer, coins the term “caddy” by calling her assistants cadets. It is during her reign that the famous golf course at St. Andrews is built.
3. 1722 – British fighter Elizabeth Wilkinson enters the boxing ring.
4. 1837 – Donald Walker’s book, Exercise for Ladies, warns women against horseback riding, because it deforms the lower part of the body.
5. 1858 – Julia Archibald Holmes (1838-87) climbs Pikes Peak in Colorado (14,110 feet) wearing bloomers on Aug. 5.
6. 1875 – The “Blondes” and “Brunettes” play their first match In Springfield, IL on Sept. 11. Newspapers heralded the event as the “first game of baseball ever played in public for gate money between feminine ball-tossers.”
7. 1883 – The first baseball “Ladies Day” is held on June 16 by the NY Giants, where both escorted and unescorted women are allowed into the park for free.
8. 1899 -The modern “safety” bicycle is invented with a light frame and two equal-sized wheels and a chain drive. More than a million American women will own and ride bicycles during the next decade. It is the first time in American history that an athletic activity for women will become widely popular.
9. 1893 – Katharine Lee Bates climbs to the top of Pike’s Peak and is inspired to compose a poem, “America, the Beautiful.”
10. 1895 – Volleyball is invented in Holyoke, MA. By the 1990′s, volleyball is the second-largest participation sport in the United States with more than 42 million participants. There is indoor and outdoor competition for boys and girls, men and women and co-ed teams.
11. 1898 – Lizzie Arlington becomes the first woman to sign a professional baseball contract, appearing in her first professional game pitching for the Philadelphia Reserves.
12. 1900 – The first 19 women to compete in the modern Olympics Games in Paris, France, play in just three sports: tennis, golf, and croquet.
    

    Brandi Chastain by Lucy Atkins

    Margaret I. Abbott is the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal. An art student in Paris, she won the nine-hole golf tournament by shooting a 47.

13. 1901 – Annie Taylor, 43, becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a custom-built barrel and live. She couldn’t swim. Her comment on being retrieved: “Nobody ever ought to do that again.”
14. 1903 – Eleanor Roosevelt enrolls in the Junior League of New York where she teaches calisthenics and dancing to immigrants.
15. 1906 – Ada Evans Dean rides her horse to victory twice in Liberty, NY, after learning that her jockey was ill. She had never ridden in a horse race before.
16. 1908 – The national anthem of baseball, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, is written about a young girl’s love of the game.
17. 1910 – Dr. Celia Duel Mosher debunks several popular myths of female health, including one claiming women breathe differently than men, which makes them unfit for strenuous exercise.
18. 1911 – Annie Smith Peck plants a “Votes for Women” banner on top of Mt. Coropuna in Peru when she becomes the first woman to climb it (at the age of 61).
19. 1914 – The American Olympic Committee formally opposes womens athletic competition in the Olympics. The only exception is the floor exercise, where women are allowed to only wear long skirts.
20. 1920 – 14-year old Aileen Riggin wins the first women’s Olympic springboard diving competition. US women will dominate Olympics springboard diving, winning all the gold, silver and bronze medals from 1920 – 1948.
21. 1936 – Sonja Henie wins the last of her ten consecutive world skating championships, begun in 1927. She revolutionized skating by choreographing her programs in time to music and by wearing short-skirted costumes, allowing her the freedom to execute more complicated movements.
22. 1936 – Gymnastics for women is added to the Olympic program at the Berlin Games.
23. 1971 – Billie Jean King becomes the first woman athlete to win more than $100,000 in a single season in any sport. She is the only woman to have won US singles titles on grass, clay, carpet and hard court.
24. 1972 – There are 817,073 girls participating in high school sports. 1973 – There are 1.3 million girls participating in high school sports.
25. 1973 – >Billie Jean King wins the “battle-of-the-sexes” tennis match against Bobby Riggs on Sept. 20 in Houston in front of more than 30,000 people and a world-wide TV audience of more than 50 million. It firmly connected women’s rights to women’s sports and inspired millions to demand equal rights, equal treatment, and equal pay.
    

    Billie Jean King

26. 1975 – Title IX goes effect on June 2.  Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, renamed in 2002 the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in honor of its principal author, but more commonly known simply as Title IX, is a United States law enacted on June 23, 1972. The law states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…” Although the most prominent aspect of Title IX is its impact on high school and collegiate athletics, the original statute made no explicit mention of athletics.

“The person that said winning isn’t everything never won anything.”- Mia Hamm