The athletic association of North Carolina high‐school girls

Abstract

The history of education is a story of costly experimentation, of victories gained through losses, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of physical education for women. The demand of the girl ten or fifteen years ago for participation in sports, which she had enjoyed only vicariously up to that time; the lack of trained women capable of meeting the challenge wisely; the bungling attempts of some of our high-school principals, who, with zeal unguided by wisdom, flung girls into the arena of combative sports, with little insight into their physical and spiritual needs-these things are only too familiar to all of us who have watched the high-school field for the last two decades. For years basket ball was the only sport open to girls. The reasons for the popularity of this much-abused sport are not hard to discover. Few schools had trained physical directors for girls, but it was usually easy to find in the faculty or in the town a man who was not only willing, but highly delighted, to coach a girls' basket-ball team. It was also easy to interest the men of a town in a game so spectaculabr; hence, the necessary funds were forthcoming. Girls were sent on long trips to compete with far-away opponents. The coach was a man, the referee a man, and the chaperon a woman who knew nothing of the game. The dressing rooms were usually inadequate, and the conduct of the spectators was often unsportsmanlike. Frequently girls entered the game who were not physically fit for the bodily and mental exertion. Conditions such as these resulted in a division of opinion. There were those who believed in athletics for girls, and there were those who did not. From many colleges, whose physical education experts viewed the wrecks, came condemnation of the high-school practices. Their advice, which was usually, Thou shalt not, fell on deaf ears; for, though they saw the evils, they offered nothing in place of the things they condemned. The young teacher who went from the college to the high school imbued with the idea of putting on a real educational program for girls found herself overwhelmed by opposition-from the townspeo-