Hoosier Hysteria and the History of Basketball

by Ramona K. Cecil

About this time of year, an odd malady strikes my state of Indiana. No, it’s not influenza, which is also prevalent now. I’m speaking of Hoosier Hysteria, the moniker attached to the fanatical excitement exhibited by crazed fans of basketball, especially high school basketball.

I must confess, while cheering for my favorite team I’ve never once mused about the origin of this excitement, or even the sport itself. But in a quieter moment I wondered, how did it all begin?

Actually, the ancient Aztecs in Mexico invented a game sometime before 1400BC that had some of the basics as our modern game of basketball. Called ollamalitzli, this sport was not a game for the faint of heart. Often brutal and even fatal, ollamalitzli resembled modern basketball only in that the object was to get a rubber ball through a metal ring at each end of a court. This was accomplished by basically a no-holds-barred free-for-all in which the loser might have to face a sacrificial dagger. Yikes! And we think the NBA can be rough!

Aztecs playing ollamalitzli

The invention of our modern game of basketball is credited to a man named James Naismith, who had never heard of the Aztecs game of ollamalitzli. 

In 1891, James Naismith was a young physical education instructor at the International Training Institution in Springfield, Massachusetts. The physical education department had been charged with developing some sort of physical game the students could play indoors. When the more senior PE teachers failed to come up with such a game, Naismith took a crack at the problem. 

James Naismith with soccer ball and peach basket

At first he envisioned some sort of indoor football, but nixed the idea fearing it would be too rough. He then considered a form of boxball, where players would pitch a football into boxes affixed to either end of the gymnasium. When he asked the janitor for boxes, all the man could produce were some peach baskets. After some trial and error, Naismith settled on baskets nailed ten feet above the floor at each end of the court and a round soccer ball instead of a football. He developed thirteen rules for the game, twelve of which are still in use.

Naismith's original 13 rules for the game of basketball

The next day he introduced the game to his eighteen student, dividing them into two teams of nine.

Naismith in center surrounded by 9 of his students

Basketball being played with basket in 1892

The game was an instant hit, though it remained plagued by some pesky problems. The peach baskets took a beating, so had to be replaced often. This problem was eventually remedied by replacing the baskets with sturdy metal rings to which nets made of cord were attached. But whether played with peach baskets or nets, another problem still remained. Each time a player made a “basket,” someone had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball.  



                           Early nets that replaced peach baskets. Note the attached

                           string that opened the net to allow the basket to fall through.

Five years later, in 1896, an anonymous player on a semi-pro team got fed-up with this frustrating aspect of the game and simply cut a hole in the bottom of the net. A real game-changer!

But we’ll back up a bit. How, you ask, did basketball come to Indiana and become such a rage in the Hoosier state? Reverend Nicholas McKay, a Presbyterian minister who had been assigned to head the Crawfordsville, Indiana YMCA and had met Naismith and learned about his new game, brought basketball with him to Crawfordsville in 1894. Hungry for a game kids could play indoors during it's cold winters, Indiana was a fertile field for the game of basketball. Baseball and football had never caught on in the mainly rural state where youngsters’ summers and autumns were filled with farming chores. But winter brought more leisure time and basketball fit the bill perfectly.

James Naismith himself is quoted as saying "Basketball really had it origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport."

The first basketball game in Indiana was played in the Crawfordsville Terminal Building March 16,1894. In this perfect Hoosier environment, the game took root and grew like weeds in a fallow field until it has become a near religion in the state. 

Crawfordsville, Indiana men's basketball team Circa 1923

Decatur, Indiana girl's basketball team 1920 - 1921

It's hard to imagine anyone growing up in Indiana after 1894 and not having their life touched in some way by basketball. The 1986 movie Hoosiers in which a small rural team battles a much larger school for the 1954 state championship, expertly depicts how the game has woven itself into the fabric of Indiana.

So as Hoosier Hysteria breaks out across the state again, I pause my cheering for a moment to remember how it all began and to pay homage to James Naismith, Nicholas McKay, and yes, even the Aztecs although I’m glad that if my team loses, they won’t be required to pay with their lives.

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

  

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com

                                                                                                             

Women and Basket Ball

Welcome to author Anne Mateer, who is guest-posting today and offering a free copy of her newest book.

While many of the sports we enjoy today—football, baseball, golf, track and field, etc. etc.—have been around for a very long time, basketball is a relative newcomer. Born in the 1890s, basketball has come into its own as a truly 20th century sport.

In 1891, Dr. James Naismith worked at a YMCA in Massachusetts. He needed a physical activity the men could engage in during the long New England winters. With two peach baskets nailed on opposite walls and a set of 13 rules, the game of basket ball (yes, in the early days it was often two words) began.

In and of itself, the history of basket ball is interesting. But even more interesting is the fact that women picked up on the game almost immediately after its inception. The first woman’s game was organized by Senda Berenson at Smith College in 1892. She adapted Dr. Naismith’s rules to emphasize the cooperative aspect of the team sport as well as to accommodate the prevailing wisdom concerning women and strenuous physical activities.

Berenson divided the court into 3 zones occupied by 2 players from each team. Yes, six girls against six girls. The interesting thing about the zones is that they were completely static. If you were placed under your own basket, on defense, you were not allowed to cross the line into the center zone. If you were positioned in the center zone, your job being to feed the ball from the defense to the offense, you could not cross the line into either basket’s territory. Likewise, if you were placed in a position to shoot the ball toward the basket, that was your only job and you stayed within the lines of that zone.

In 1901 Spalding edited and published Berenson’s rules, but those weren’t the only rules by which girls played basket ball. Some teams used Baer’s rules while others played the same game the boys played. By the early years of the 20th century, several women's colleges had set up teams. (It is interesting to note that other colleges banned women’s basket ball!) 

Bloomers appeared as the accepted basket ball costume in 1896. The first high school girls game on record happened in Chicago in 1896 as well. And yet people still weren’t convinced this was an appropriate game for women to play. Especially in public. But the popularity of the sport continued to grow.

If you look at high school yearbooks from small towns in the 1910s and 1920s, you often find a girls basket ball team included. And while the sport remained “modified” from the boys’ game even into the 1970s, basket ball as a sport for girls, especially at the high school level, has enjoyed a lifespan of over a hundred years.

Tell me what fascinated you most about this short history of women and basketball and I’ll enter you to win a copy of my newest release, Playing by Heart, where Lula has an unexpected encounter with the sport.

Anne Mateer loves bringing history to life through fiction. She is the author of four historical novels, all set in the years of or just before World War I. Anne and her husband live in Texas. To discover more about Anne, visit her website at www.annemateer.com.