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Full-Court
Press
The
Washington Mystics' Women's National Basketball Association season
is in full swing.
Chamique Holdsclaw is filling it up with her jump shot. Nikki
McCray is driving hard for the hoop. And MCI Center is rocking to
the
full-court action.
When I see these hard-charging women, I think: These girls got
game.
Just a few years ago, there was no WNBA. And for a long time,
female basketball players didn't even play full court.
Here's the story. In 1891, James Naismith needed a game for some
restless young men. He invented basketball by hanging a peach basket
on
the wall of a Springfield, Massachusetts, gym. A few years later,
Clara
Baer, a college physical education teacher in New Orleans, adjusted
the
game for women. She thought women were delicate and couldn't take
the
heart-pounding strain of full-court action.
Baer gave the women's game a fancy name--basquette--and limited
each player to a small section of the court. She charged a player
with a
foul if the player left her section. Within a short while, the rules
were changed to give women a little more room to run--but not as
much as
the men.
Women's basketball became known as "six-on-six" because
each team
had six players instead of five. Three players played offense (forwards)
and three players played defense (guards). The forwards stayed on
one
side of the court and the guards stayed on the other. No player
was
allowed to cross the center line. And the women weren't allowed
to
dribble as much as the men. Some rules made women pass after just
three
dribbles.
Some versions of six-on-six allowed one forward and one guard to
play full court--they were called "rovers."
Six-on-six was popular for many years. Perhaps your mother and
grandmother played it.
Six-on-six basketball was so popular in Iowa that 15,000 screaming
fans would turn out for the high school girls state championship
tournaments. The girls' tournaments drew more fans than the boys'
tournaments. Six-on-six was still being played in Iowa in the early
1990s.
Today, women and girls play full court and at full speed.
If you don't believe me, go see a Mystics game.
They're not playing "basquette."
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