Girls' Golf in the Golden Age of Sports

By ROBERT PRUTER

Girls' golf in Illinois may seem like a relatively recent development. The state championship dates back to only 1973, when Waukegan (East) won the first IHSA state title. The IHSA-sponsored meet was only preceded by a few years of emerging golf programs during the early 1970s, when interscholastic competition was opened to girls. A look at the history of the game in Illinois shows many decades of relative inactivity regarding inter-school golf competition for girls. Only by going all the way back to the mid-1920s, does evidence emerge of girls' golf competition. The 1920s has come to be known as the Golden Age of Sports, a decade when golf for girls and women flourished as never before.

All across Illinois at that time girls were competing on the links against one another, but in the high schools it was another story. Under the prevailing ideology in the educational establishment, all interscholastic competition among girls was banned. The educators, instead, encouraged the girls to form Girls Athletic Associations (GAA) in their high schools, and many of these provided intramural golf competition.

However, for a few years in the mid-1920s golf for girls flourished interscholastically, when the Chicago Public High School League sponsored the sport. The league introduced golf competition in 1922, when it allowed the girls to compete in the annual boys' tournament in June for the league title. The girls would play the same number of holes as the boys, on the same course in an "open" tournament. A team champion would receive a trophy and individual awards would be first, second, and third place medallist prizes.

The first year, only two girls, both from Hyde Park High, took advantage of the opportunity and participated. Despite the meager turnout of girls in 1922, the league awarded an individual title to the winner of the two. In 1923, there were competitors from several schools, and an individual title was awarded to a Hyde Park girl. Hyde Park, although it had the only full team, was awarded the team title. The following year, only Austin had a team entered, and it won both the individual and team trophy. Clearly interest in the girls' competition was not what the league had hoped.

In 1925, however, there was considerable more activity, fueled by the huge 1920s craze for miniature, or indoor, golf. The Chicago Public High School league that year initiated a league tournament the previous year in the sport for boys, and soon the girls were competing as well. Such schools as Senn, Lake View, and Schurz fielded girls' indoor golf teams, and competed at the Bob MacDonald's indoor golf establishment. At the league meet in June, Schurz won both the team and individual title. The medallist winner was Florence Beebe, from Schurz, who was fast developing a reputation as one of the state's top junior golfers. The Chicago Tribune dubbed her the "long-hitting wonder of feminine golf." The summer after the tournament she would gather huge galleries and garner headlines for her accurate long drives, one of which went 310 yards. In one match she averaged 189 yards for 15 drives.

Beebe would repeat as the Chicago schools individual medalist in 1926, beating out Mildred Hackl of Senn High. The Chicago Tribune showed a foursome on a green from the high school tournament, two girls and two boys. The girls are putting. The photo is stunning in its modernity, high school young men and women participating in a sport together on wholly equal terms. At a time when high school girls faced extraordinary barriers in the high schools to interscholastic competition, this photo looking back from the early 21st century was a breath of fresh air.

The two girls in the photo were 15-year-old Mildred Hackl and 16-year-old Florence Beebe. Hackle would become a bigger star than Beebe, who never quite fulfilled her early promise; her last significant title was the Illinois woman's state championship in 1927. In 1926, Hackl won Woman's Western Golf Association junior championship, and won the Woman's Western senior title in 1930. In 1932, she was featured in one of a series of articles on prominent women in Chicago golf. While Florence Beebe's star quickly faded, her younger sister, June Beebe, emerged as a top golfer, winning the Cook County title and Women's Western Open. But unlike her older sister, Florence never had an opportunity to compete for her high school.

The most famous female golfer to come out of the Chicago public high schools, and undoubtedly out of Illinois, was Virginia Van Wie. While at the age of 16 and still attending Lindblom High — in 1925 when the school did not have a golf team — Van Wie first emerged as an extraordinary golfer. She was the daughter of wealthy parents, and learned her golf at the Beverly Country Club, and during the summers, she would go with her parents to summer homes in Michigan and Florida, and compete with the best. In the summer of 1925, the newspapers first noticed her when she won the Western Michigan championship and then won the Western Junior championship, and upset several top golfers in other tournaments. The following year she beat the national champion, Glenna Collett, for the East Coast Florida championship, and began a string of three Chicago District golf titles. After coming close to the national title a few times, Van Wie beat Collett for the first of her three consecutive national amateur titles in 1932. After winning her final championship, she was proclaimed the "world's greatest female golfer," but chose to retire from the game in 1935 without defending her title. In 1950 she became a charter inductee into the Women's Golf Hall of Fame. Virginia Van Wie died in 1992.

The Chicago Public High School league had terminated girls' interscholastic golf after the 1926 competition. The reason stems from changes in high school governance in Illinois in 1926. That year, the Illinois High School Athletic Association (IHSAA, now IHSA) began sharing sponsorship of the golf, tennis, and track and field state championship meets with the University of Illinois. The Chicago schools heretofore had not been members of the IHSAA, but because of their desire to participate in the golf, tennis, and track and field state meets, they quickly joined. The downside of their joining was that the IHSAA at that time in its bylaws expressively forbid any interschool contests for girls in all sports.

Ironically, the following year the IHSAA amended its bylaws to exempt the sports of golf, tennis, and archery from the prohibition. However, the Chicago schools never resumed girls' competition in golf and other sports until the schools in the rest of the state made the then radical change in the early 1970s to interscholastic competition for girls.

During the 1920s, the golf competition in the Chicago public schools was one of the few bright spots in for girls' athletic achievement in the high schools. The young ladies received sizable coverage in the newspapers, they were lauded by their schools, and they played alongside boys in mixed tournaments. What a "Golden Age" it was for the high school girl golfers then.

Chicago Public High School League Girls Golf Championships

Chicago Public League Golf Championship, 1926. From left to right, Robert Steward (Senn), Mildred Hackl (Senn), Sam Alpert (Marshall), and Florence Beebe (Schurz). Chicago Tribune Photo, June 13, 1926.

Senn Girls' Golf Team, 1924.  From the school yearbook.

Posted April 1, 2005.

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Footnotes available upon 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.