St. Timothy's School - Oldest Women's Basketball Rivalry

Oldest Women's Basketball Rivalry

This game is more famously known as the oldest ongoing basketball competition between women's schools - St. Timothy's School and the Bryn Mawr School have held a game each year since 1901. As for the St. Timothy's/Bryn Mawr rivalry, credit goes to Edith Hamilton, the latter school's first formally appointed headmistress (hired in 1896, she ran the school for 26 years) and author of the definitive textbook Mythology. Hamilton arranged for the first game to be played between the two schools, on Nov. 25, 1901 on an outdoor "field" at the Garrett Estate in Catonsville, home of the family of Bryn Mawr co-founder Elizabeth Garrett.

According to the Bryn Mawrtyr's account, the grounds were wet (sawdust was scattered in a vain attempt to dry the playing surface), and twice steady rain threatened to postpone the game. The goal had no backboard, the ball was made of leather, and the girls were uniformed in long, heavy corduroy skirts, wool blouses, high-collared dickeys, and heavy black stockings. Boys were not admitted, and a tiny black kitten named "Satan" served as Bryn Mawr's mascot, prancing about in a white sweater embossed with bms. Soggy and primitive as the conditions sound, the school newspaper described the match as an exhilarating display of athletic prowess. "Our players . . . were at first somewhat demoralized by the splendid guarding of their opponents and rather lost control of the play," the December 1901 edition reads. "The first goal was a very pretty long distance throw made by Mary Brady, and of course greatly encouraged our team."

Bryn Mawr won the nail-biter 8-7—a score one would see after a few minutes of today's game, but understandable given the sawdust surface, boardless basket, and neck-to-toe uniforms. Afterward the girls gathered for tea and Kossuth cake, a chocolate-covered spongelike delicacy named after Lajos Kossuth, a Hungarian general who visited Baltimore in the late 1800s, after a life of freedom-fighting that led to his country's independence in 1849. (There is also a street in Highlandtown named after Kossuth.) Like the game itself, the post-game festivities have endured, and to this day the girls covet the same engraved silver cup Bryn Mawr took home in 1901. The tradition of presenting a game ball to the winning squad, however, went by the wayside during World War II, when materials such as leather were being conserved.

But "The Game," as it's come to be known among students at both schools, hasn't endured without major challenges over the years. In the years after its invention, basketball was widely considered too barbaric for females. On the heels of a 1907 Illinois High School Athletic Association report decrying the sport as "unladylike" ("he costumes are too circusy for girls, and . . . the record of blackened eyes, scratched countenances, and bruised limbs . . . is an argument against the game as far as the lassies are concerned"), girls' basketball was banned in that state, and schools nationwide followed suit. But St. Timothy's and Bryn Mawr played on, determined not to deprive their young women of an activity available to their male counterparts. (Illinois eventually came around, lifting its ban in 1910.)

Since winning the inaugural game, Bryn Mawr has maintained the advantage, leading the series 53-43 (with three ties)--thanks, in part, to the fact that for the first 20 or so years of the rivalry St. Tim's didn't have a gymnasium where its girls could practice. St. Timothy's did enjoy periods of dominance, winning throughout the World War II years and the early '60s. (Its most memorable victory was a 64-18 rout in 1951 that prompted Bryn Mawr players to issue an apology to their classmates.)

The Intra-school game has become a much bigger part of school life at St. Timothy's.