Senda Berenson Abbott (March 19, 1868 – February 16, 1954) was a Russian-American figure of women's basketball and the author of the first Basketball Guide for Women (1901–07). She was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor on July 1, 1985, the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.
Berenson was the first person to introduce and adapt rules for women's basketball to Smith College in 1899, modifying the existing men's rules.
Abbott was the sister of the art historian Bernard Berenson and a great-great-aunt of Berry Berenson and Marisa Berenson.
Background
Family
Abbott was born as Senda Valvrojenski to Albert Valvrojenski and Judith Valvrojenski (née Mickleshanski) in Butrimonys, Vilnius Governorate, Russian Empire to a Lithuanian Jewish family, who would immigrate to the United States when she was seven years old. Her older brother was Bernard Berenson, and she would later have another younger brother and two younger sisters. Her father Albert grew up following an educational track of classical Jewish learning and contemplated becoming a rabbi. However, he became a practitioner of Haskalah, a European movement which advocated more integration of Jews into secular society. After his home and lumber business were burned to the ground, he lived with his more traditionalist in-laws who pressured him to enroll Bernard with a Hebrew and Aramaic tutor. He decided to move to the United States to raise his family according to his own beliefs, moving alone in 1874 to the West End of Boston. He became a "poor peddler of pots and pans", selling his wares in nearby towns. Albert changed his surname to Berenson soon after his arrival as part of his "Westernization". After months of work, he sent for his family in 1875.
Albert insisted that the family speak only English, stopped attending synagogue, and attempted to sever ties to their Jewish traditions. Despite this, his children did not fully abandon their faith. The family had moved to a section of Boston with almost fifty families from their original neighborhood, some of whom were relatives, so they grew up with religious influences. After her brother attended the Boston Latin School, he moved to Cambridge to prepare to enroll at Harvard. Since she and her brother were close, Senda spent part of her mid-teens in Cambridge.
Early life Senda did not have much interest in athletics as a child and preferred music, literature, and art. She was "frail and delicate" in her childhood, which interfered with her schooling. She was partially home-schooled by her father and attended Boston Latin Academy (then known as Girl's Latin School), but did not graduate. She briefly attended the Boston Conservatory of Music, but health issues forced her to leave the school. She had tried painting and the piano, but her health limited both; she was unable to keep up the practice. Senda moved out of the house and began a relationship with a man named David. However, Bernard was not yet self-sufficient, and Senda would send him money on a regular basis. She ended up moving back home, for what were "probably economic reasons". The relationship with David was serious enough to prompt a proposal of marriage, but Senda declined and they amicably ended their relationship near the end of 1888.
Her health continued to deteriorate, forcing her to give up her piano lessons at the Conservatory due to her back problems. She slowed her writing to her brother, who worried about her health and urged her to take a summer in the country. That refreshed her temporarily and she re-enrolled at the Conservatory, but she was unable to keep it up, and fell into a long depression that extended into 1890.
Boston Normal School of Gymnastics Mary Hemenway was a philanthropist in Boston who founded the Boston Normal School of Cooking. The following year, she provided instruction to one hundred Boston school teachers in a system of gymnastics education known as the Swedish system. At the time, the predominant form of physical education was a German style of gymnastics, with an emphasis on strength training and competitiveness. In 1889, Hemenway funded and Homans arranged a conference on physical training, which had national influence on the course of physical education in schools. The conference "is considered by most historians to be pivotal in the development of American physical education". In that same year, Hemenway created the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. Later, the school would become Department of Hygiene and Physical Education at Wellesley College. Berenson learned about the School of Gymnastics from a friend and decided to enroll to improve her physical condition. However, the entrance requirements included high school graduation or equivalent, and Berenson hadn't graduated. In addition, the entrants were expected to be in satisfactory physical condition, which was not Berenson's case. Berenson met with Homans, and Homans took a liking to her and felt that her physical condition could be improved and that the result might serve as a testament to the school's approach. Homans decided to admit Berenson. The school offered a two-tier teacher training course and a one-year certificate course; Berenson enrolled in the one-year program.
Berenson's start was inauspicious. Years later she would exclaim "how I hated that school for the first few months!". She wasn't interested in the gymnastics work, as the exercises made her "ache all over". Early on, just standing erect for five minutes forced her to lie down, and she found she had to study lying on her back. She decided to give the exercises a "fair trial", and she saw improvement in three months. By the end of the year, she was doing the prescribed two hours a day of exercise and felt much better. Her brother was disappointed to hear that she had not returned to the Conservatory but did not fully comprehend how much she had improved at the gymnastics school. Berenson decided to enroll at the school for a second year.
Smith College—initial hiring Berenson's condition improved so markedly that Homans sent her to the elementary school in Andover to teach the headmaster and faculty about the Swedish theory of gymnastics. Berenson made twice-weekly visits to the school. This first attempt at teaching proved so successful that, when Homans learned of a temporary opening due to the illness of a teacher at Smith College, she recommended that Berenson consider it, even though she had not completed her second year. Berenson would later be described as a "missionary" referring to her strong support for the inclusion of physical education in the lives of the students. This characterization was intriguing for two reasons:
less than two years earlier, her physical condition would not even permit her to play the piano for long stretches her position was expected to be temporary, making it all that more unusual that she would push her beliefs so forcefully.
Perhaps her own improvement, which she attributed to the Swedish gymnastics, led her to the belief that her experience could be transferred to others. She promoted physical education outside of Smith College as well. The local high school, Northampton High School, experimented with the Swedish system of gymnastics under her direction in 1892. She also introduced Swedish exercise and games such as basketball to the inmates at the Northampton State Hospital. Berenson arrived at a school with well-equipped facilities. The school had recently completed the Alumnae Gymnasium in 1890, which provided some of the best facilities in the country for college women. Although the physical facilities were in fine shape, the notion that women might engage in physical exercise, much less be required to do so, was not then well-established. The prevailing atmosphere did not support the notion that women should engage in physical activity. Berenson would write, in 1894,
Until recent years, the so-called ideal woman was a small waisted, small footed, small brained damsel, who prided herself on her delicate health, who thought fainting interesting, and hysterics fascinating.
Berenson sought to establish mandatory physical education in this atmosphere. She spent considerable time presenting her position to the faculty and administration. One meeting began with only one faculty member in agreement, but by the meeting's end, she had persuaded the faculty to support a mandatory second year of physical education. She had six classes each day filled with "enthusiastic girls", but she realized at the end of term that many students had never come to class. She instituted roll call the following year.
Women's basketball origins Known as the Mother of Women's Basketball, Berenson became the first woman enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985. In 1892, after Berenson realized that the gymnastic exercises were not as popular as she had originally thought, she looked for alternatives. She read about the new game of basketball, invented by James Naismith, in the YMCA publication Physical Education. Group games were "unheard of" at Smith, but she felt this would be an interesting experiment. Other attempts at teaching games had not succeeded, in part because the women of that time had no experience with team play. Initial games were played in class in the spring of 1892. The exact date of the first informal game is not known, but one student wrote to her mother on March 6, 1892, describing a new game they were playing, in which the object was to put a ball into your opponent's basket, as "great fun". Instead of the peach baskets used in the first men's game, the goals in the first women's game were fashioned from waste baskets.
The response was so positive that Berenson scheduled a game between the freshman and sophomore classes. That game, played March 22, 1893, was also played with Naismith rules. The players wore bloomers, and no men were admitted to the event. The players all wore blue uniforms, adorned by an armband with the color associated with their class. The spectators wore the class colors: green for the sophomore class of 1895, and lavender for the freshman class of 1896. When Berenson tossed the ball between the two opposing centers, she struck the outstretched arm of the freshman team's center, dislocating her shoulder. The start of this game was delayed while they attended to the distressed player and arranged for a substitute. The New York Herald reported five days later that "[i]n spite of the fact that the sophomore captain was disabled at the beginning of the game, the score was 5-4 in favor of the sophomores after a close contest of two 15-minute halves."
Despite her unflagging efforts to support physical education for young women, Berenson did not encourage inter-scholastic games. In her words, "We should encourage the instinct of play, not competition." This set a precedent for the non-participation in interscholastic events which would be followed for many years. While competition with other schools was discouraged, she did promote competition among classes and established a tradition of interclass games. The atmosphere at the games was noisy, but enthusiasm was expressed by singing. Shouting would result in the discontinuance of the game.
Berenson had introduced the game as an experiment, so she sought to determine how the students reacted to the game. She polled her students, and all but one felt they had improved in many areas, including "endurance, lung capacity, alertness, courage, [and] toughness". One student reported that the game brought her "health, wealth and happiness", the second of which was attributed to lower doctor bills. The early game followed different rules than are followed today, as evidenced by a play dreamed up by one of the freshmen on the first teams: