Senda Berenson

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Senda Berenson officiates at first collegiate women's basketball game

March 22, 1893

Senda Berenson, the "Mother of Women's Basketball," officiated at the first women's basketball game on March 22, 1893, at Smith College, in Northa

Sports in the United States

Historians of American sport and of American Jewish history have generally neglected the study of sports by and for Jewish American women. As sport increasingly played a significant role in American society in the twentieth century, it also became part of Jewish women’s experiences in American life.

Senda Berenson

Known as the “Mother of Women’s Basketball,” Senda Berenson pioneered women’s basketball as the director of the physical education department at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Many of the rules she developed for women’s basketball became the standard ones used for seventy years.

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