Chicago Schoolgirls of the 1920s
Play Interscholastic Basketball
By ROBERT PRUTER
By the 1920s, basketball was still one of the most visible sports in the high schools, and one of the most popular with the girls. Interscholastic competition in basketball had been banned for girls across the state for more than a decade, and school authorities were particularly vigilant with regard to any attempts by the girls to play an outside game, either with another school or an amateur club. Only intramural competition was considered appropriate.
Not only were the girls circumscribed in terms of competition, they were circumscribed in terms of the game. Since just prior to World War I physical educators had ruled the conventional five-person game was far too strenuous for girls, and directed the girls into a decorous line game. Under rules of the line game, the court was divided into three sections, and in each section two girls from each team-two guards, two centers, and two forwards--would contest for the ball, never moving from their respective sections and not allowed more than two dribbles. Guards as defenders were destined never to shoot the ball, and forwards as shooters were destined never to learn how to play defense. In many Chicago schools an even more restrictive game was also played intramurally called captain basketball, or captainball. The object was not to throw the ball into the basket, but to the captain, who would stand where the basket normally would be. Sport historian Mary LeCompe called it "a game for females too 'frail' for the arduous game of basketball."
No matter how constraining the game they were required to play, the girls from the Chicago public high schools were driven to compete, particularly when they looked all around them and saw all kinds of basketball competition readily available to girls their age. The newspapers reported daily during the winter months on a welter of games by amateur clubs, and teams representing private and parochial high schools, park districts, church leagues, industrial leagues, and the AAU all who vigorously competed against each other, with no adverse affects, and playing by men's rules as well. Chicago had a number of highly visible amateur club teams, to which the newspapers gave lots of ink, notably the Uptown Brownies, Tri Chi Girls, and Jewish People's Institute team. The girls played for Chicago, Midwest, and national championships in large venues before thousands of fans. In 1923, eight amateur girls teams formed a local league.
In the African-American community, there were many amateur teams, most notably the Oliver Church team and the Roamer Girls. The star of the Roamers was Isadore Channels, who was also a four-time national ATA tennis champion. Her high school, Phillips, did not play interscholastic basketball, and Channels while still a student was playing for the Roamers, and playing by men's rules and in front of large boisterous crowds. When the Phillips High boys would play a big intersectional game or a cross-state game, as against Armstrong from Washington D.C. and Peoria Spalding, the game was usually preceded by the Roamers playing another amateur team, such as the Harvey Boomers. Channels played before her fellow students, but not in the uniform of Phillips.
Reflecting the attitudes of the almost universally male sportswriters fraternity, the Chicago Tribune columnist in 1926 reported favorably on one of the amateur games he saw, "In appearance the girls were attractive and decidedly not of the 'hard boiled' variety. We expected the girls to slow up from exhaustion, but they stood it better than most boys' teams and seldom took time out except for bumps. We do not know that aftereffect such strenuous and nervous physical exercise has for girls, but Principal Page of the Edmonton High school, accompanying the team, asserts no ill effects have been observed in twelve years of play...we're no longer a skeptic." Regarding the use of men's rules for girls, sports reporter Harland Rohm wrote, "[The] girls game, in which each girl plays in a certain section of the floor like an animated checker, still survives, but it won't do for the girl of the present day." Did the male sportswriters have a better sense of what girls in the 1920s should experience in sports than the physical educators? In retrospect from our vantage point today, it appears so.
The public school girls also probably looked enviously at their private and parochial school counterparts, who throughout the decade would play occasional interschool contests against one another. Newspaper reports, often in agate type at the bottom of the page, revealed games by such Catholic secondary schools as DePaul High, St Thomas Aquinas, and Providence Academy, as well as by Luther Institute. By the end of the decade, the game had become so popular that the Catholic League formed a basketball league for the girls.
In the public schools, interscholastic basketball survived underground and on the margins. Some Chicago public high school girls, either oblivious to the rule against interscholastic competition or defiant, occasionally competed, but such games were so underwater they never made the newspapers, and only occasionally appeared in student publications. For example, in 1917, the Schurz High girls played a home and away series with the Parker High girls. The games took place after the inter-class intramural season was done, as the Schurz yearbook explained, "The material was considered good and our gymnasium instructors decided that the girls were good enough to play an outside team." But these games at this time were far and few in-between. In 1920, the Hyde Park girls played the Phillips girls, the Hyde Park yearbook noting that, "this was the first time that we girls had played another school in years." The custom of playing one or two outside games after the end of the intramural season, however, soon became the norm in several Chicago high schools.
In 1922, Senn High played a game against Schurz, and in 1926 played a game against Hyde Park. The Senn yearbook reported in 1926 that because its girls had to meet an outside team there was a necessity for "picking an all-school team." Schurz in 1924 reported that its team beat the Marshall girls' team that year. The Englewood 1924 yearbook reported on its girls playing basketball for the first time, and that the Senior class defeated not only the Junior and Sophomore teams but also a "representative team" from Hyde Park High.
By 1926, some Chicago high schools were building up to a full interscholastic schedule. Hyde Park in 1926 reported three outside games, two with Morgan Park and one with Senn. The school's yearbook noted that Morgan Park "was considered the champion team of the far south side," and also mentioned that the first meeting with Morgan Park was the "first game of the season." The Fenger High 1926 yearbook likewise reported on more extensive activity, whereby the Fenger girls played two games against Calumet High and a third game against Morgan Park High. A second game was scheduled with Morgan Park High, but a blizzard cancelled the game. All this activity would not go unnoticed by league authorities, especially because they wanted the Chicago schools to join the Illinois High School Athletic Association (now Illinois High School Association) for the 1926-27 school year.
The IHSAA, which had been sponsoring a state basketball tournament for years, had become the cosponsor with the University of Illinois in its annual track, tennis, and golf tournaments in 1927. The IHSAA had a strict ban on all interscholastic contests for girls. The Chicago Public High School League likewise long had an interscholastic ban for girls, except for golf and tennis, but the organization had become lax in enforcing it. Now the league saw the need for its schools to get into compliance with the IHSAA and it effectively shut down all the underground interscholastic competition being conducted in swimming, volleyball, softball, and basketball, as well as its sponsored competition in golf and tennis. The 1927 Senn High yearbook noted that, "no invitational games were played with other schools this year," and this message was repeated in yearbooks throughout the city that year.
While most of the public schools continued to remain in compliance to the ban on outside basketball games for girls, a couple of high schools appeared to forget that such a ban was in place. Schurz High was a common offender in breaking the rule against interscholastic competition. In 1928, the school's first and second girls basketball teams played a pair of games with the first and second teams of the North Shore Country Day School, a private institution that was not a member of the IHSAA. The school maintained this annual arrangement up through 1931. In 1929, the Schurz girls team was captained by future track Olympian Nan Gindele, who took her team outside the school to engage three amateur teams, namely those of the First National Bank, Central Trust Bank, and the Olivet Institute, all before the intramural season began. A 1931 Schurz yearbook reported not only on its annual games with North Shore Country Day School, but also on a contest against Roosevelt High. Chicago school authorities belatedly became alert again to this last upsurge in interscholastic activity, and put a stop to it in the 1934-35 school year. The Schurz-Roosevelt 1931 contest was probably the last interscholastic basketball game in the Chicago schools until the early 1970s, when interscholastic competition was opened up again for girls.
These glimmering of evidence gleaned from Chicago high school publications indicate that there was a level of interschool competition that while not common did occur on occasion, and that in the absence of administrative control the girls will follow their inclinations to compete beyond their school walls. Just as the girls were building up to full-fledged interscholastic competition in 1926, the door was shut on that rising opportunity. But so great was the desire for competition among the high school girls that even after the 1927 some girls in a few schools still found ways to compete in outside games, which again was suppressed by 1935. The Chicago schoolgirls of the 1920s exhibited the normal reactions of young competitive spirits, and their attempts to expand their competition with other schools was something they could proudly relate to later generations. Perhaps, in the early 1970s, when girls once again were playing interscholastic basketball, there was at least one grandmother who related to her granddaughter, something like, "we played Senn too, and did we have fun."
Captain Nan Gindele and her Schurz 1929 team.
Footnotes available on request. Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.