In the winter of 1892, the new instructor of physical training at
Smith College, a diminutive young woman with a heavy accent,
introduced her students to an adaptation of James Naismith's new
game of Basket Ball. An immediate if unexpected success, the game
spread to other women's schools across the country, and soon its
founder, Senda Berenson (1868-1954), was called upon to codify its
distinctive set of gender-specific rules. Emphasizing team passing
and position over individual play, the version she instituted
defined women's basketball for seventy years and eventually earned
her the honor of being the first female elected to the Basketball
Hall of Fame. Yet, as Ralph Melnick points out, Berenson's
pioneering role in the history of women's athletics was more a
matter of accident than destiny. A Jewish immigrant from Lithuania,
prone to ill health throughout her childhood, she enrolled in the
Boston Normal School for Gymnastics in the fall of 1890 with the
hope of strengthening herself so that she could pursue a career as
a pianist, dancer, or painter. Instead, she soon became both a
practitioner and a proponent of a new approach to women's physical
education, one aimed at providing a ""natural outlet of the play
instinct,"" developing ""endurance and physical courage"" as well
as ""quickness of thought and action,"" and promoting through team
work the ""power of organization"" women needed to achieve full
social equality. Extending her work into the factories and blighted
urban tenements of America, Berenson later won the recognition of
Jane Addams, Margaret Sanger, and other progressive reformers.
Believing that ""Americans have forgotten how to play,"" she wanted
to teach others to live ""joyfully - beautifully."" For Berenson,
the physical culture of exercise and games, played not for
competition but for personal and social development as well as
sheer enjoyment, was but another form of art. This convergence of
athletics and aesthetics was hardly surprising, Melnick explains,
because the single most important influence on Senda Berenson's
life was her brother, the renowned art critic and connoisseur,
Bernard Berenson. The two siblings wrote frequently to each other
over the course of their lives, and the author draws heavily on
their correspondence throughout the book to create an intimate and
insightful portrait of a remarkable American woman.
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