Today's Tidbit... 1895 Wellesley College Women's Football

Almost every fan of football history knows the game transitioned from rugby while being played by men at elite Eastern colleges. Less well-known was women playing the gridiron game in similar institutions before the century turned, particularly at Wellesley College. Wellesley has been a premier institution for women since its founding. It was second only to MIT introducing laboratory science courses into the undergraduate curriculum and was a pioneer in promoting women's athletics.

As football became a distinct sport in the late 1800s, society was increasingly concerned with the lack of exercise among the emerging managerial and office worker classes. While that focus largely fell on men, similar concerns about women and their need for physical pursuits were raised.

('Five Women Who Lead,' Boston Globe, January 13, 1895.)

A small group of physical instructors helped push those ideas along, including Lucile Eaton Hill, the European-trained head of Wellesley's physical education. As Hill wrote in 1892:

Students and brain-workers generally, from the conditions of their lives, present a more or less passing congestion, or tendency to such congestion, or the brain and abdominal organs, decreased respiration, and the mind tired from prolonged concentration. The first object of the gymnastic drill must be to counteract these evils, to relieve the brain and oppressed organs, to reinstate a healthy respiration and circulation, to tone up the body generally.

'Physical Training,' The Wellesley Prelude, January 23., 1892.