Geno Auriemma
UConn Women's Basketball Coach talks about his experience as a coach at a time when views of women in sports were changing. (Makers)
Lisa Leslie
This WNBA pioneer talks about her experience as a founding member of professional women's basketball. (Makers)
Tamika Catchings
WNBA player talks about her struggle with hearing loss and how basketball changed her life. (Makers)
Violet Palmer
The first female referee for the NBA talks about the resistance she faced and the respect she earned. (Makers)
Vivian Stringer
This Champion College Basketball Coach talks about the discrimination women faced in the1970s and 1980s. (Makers)
Basketball; End of Era in Girls Basketball, New York Times, February 5, 1993
An Oral History of the First U.S. Olympic Women's Basketball Team, Huffington Post, July 29, 2016
Check out the Women's Hoops Blog for a comprehensive list of books about women's basketball!
Hult, Joan S and Trekell, Marianna, ed., "The Story of Rule Changes" A Century of Women's Basketball, National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, 1991. pp. 86-93.
Men's and womens rules both began with the conception of the game by Naismith, but women interpreted the rules differently from the beginning and developed their own game. This publication, offered online in PDF format, provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of women's basketball from a "ladylike" cooperative sport to a competitive sport.
"They often drag in their wake rowdyism, girls became careless in dress and speech and lost their dignity and womanliness. . . . basket ball is a menace to the growing girl that it unsexes her..." - Berenson p. 138
"Fortunately for the preservation of basket ball, some of us who saw its good points over twenty-odd years ago realized that in order to adapt it to the use of women and girls certain modification would have to be made in the rules and regulations then governing the game. The hair pulling, face slapping, clinching, striking and kicking contests that led up to this decision are all vividly in mind. . All of this barbaric rudeness, ill temper and unsportsmanlike conduct was largely eliminated by adopting what is known as the line game" - Dudley R. Sargent
The training of our girls in basket ball, under perhaps a little more careful watch of coaches and the Department of Physical Education, cannot fail to give us better women for the mothers of the next generation." ~Edward Hitchcock, American Physical Education Association
Basket ball . . . is by far the best to teach the importance of team play; to teach co-operation; to teach the value of subordinating one's self for the good of the team for the cause most necessary traits to develop in woman of to-day."
1990's
"In 1934 girls started playing a two-court, six-on-six game that put three forwards and three guards on each side of a center line they weren't allowed to cross." This video from Iowa Public Television explains the rules of the game.
Library Information and Media Center - Monona Grove High School - Monona, Wisconsin