Today’s Throwback Thursday features a set of images depicting the 1924 Blue Springs High School girls basketball team.The six young women (and occasionally their coach) are posing in these photographs with a trophy that they presumably won in a tournament. The trophy may even be from the 1924 girls basketball state tournament.
In 1924 the Nebraska High School Athletic Association voted to abolish the girls’ state basketball tournament and to bar girls’ teams from entering any state, district, or county basketball tournaments in the future. Association members voiced “protests against girls’ competitive athletics in general.”
The move was part of a long national backlash against women’s sports. The University of Nebraska had already disbanded its women’s basketball team after the 1908 season. Physical recreation was OK, but highly competitive, “mannish” play was said to be inappropriate and even harmful to women.
Cornhusker women’s basketball was reintroduced as a varsity sport for the 1974-75 season. The Nebraska girls’ state high school basketball tournament resumed in 1977.
