September 4, 2025
BASKETBALL MAKES GIRLS QUARREL,
SAYS MISS CAPEN.
New Physical Director of Y. W. C. A.
Will Not Allow Dr. Naismith's
Game to Be Played.
"Basketball cannot be played by girls without making them quarrel," said Miss Julia Capen, who yesterday took charge of the physical education work of the Kansas City Y. W. C. A.
That is the reason that there is to be no competitive basketball in the Kansas City association this year. Miss Capen is following the lead of many other physical directors throughout the country in putting the ban on the most strenuous of girls' sports. Dr. Clark Hetherton, director of athletics at the University of Missouri, aroused much criticism last year when he contended that the game was bad for women and that every girl who played basketball on the university teams suffered from a nervous collapse before she left school or immediately afterwards. Now Miss Capen says it is bad for the girls' tempers and will forbid it for the association girls. A little mild practice might be allowed, but no real scrimmaging.
Miss Capen succeeds Miss Tamson Weatherbee, who goes to Milwaukee. She plans to enlarge the enrollment in the gymnasium classes, especially the classes for little girls. Children ranging from 6 to 12 years of age will be given instructions in all manner of games, such as Boston ball captain ball, indoor baseball, volley ball, long base, and others.
The Swedish system of correctional gymnastics will be introduced by Miss Capen and instruction in dancing and fancy drills will be given the older girls' and married women's classes.
"It is alarming the number of women you see every day with one shoulder higher than the other or with some other defect which the girl scarcely notices herself, but which is remarked at once by all who see her," said Miss Capen. "Careless habits of standing and walking and breathing are to blame for these defects, which could be remedied by proper gymnastic exercises."
Miss Capen graduated from the Boston Normal school of Gymnastics and has taken work in the Yale summer school. For the last five years she has been physical director of the Binghampton, N. Y., Y. W. C. A. and taught in the Lady Grey School for Girls.
Labels: sports, universities, women, YWCA
