Senda Berenson Abbott

Russian-born educator and athlete

• Born: March 19, 1868
• Birthplace: Butrimonys, near Vilna, Lithuania, Russian Empire (now Biturmansk, Lithuania
• Died: February 16, 1954
• Place of death: Santa Barbara, California

Abbott promoted exercise to enhance people’s health, emotionally and physically. She designed athletic activities specifically for females, emphasizing sportsmanship, teamwork, and personal development more than competition. Abbott defended physical education’s benefits for girls and women to counter criticism alleging sports are unfeminine and might be harmful to females.

Early life

Senda Berenson Abbott (SEHN-dah BEHR-ihn-suhn AB-uht) was born on March 19, 1868, in Vilna, Russia, according to information she provided on her 1909 U.S. passport application. Her parents, Albert Valvrojenski and Julia Michaeles, lived in Butrimonys, forty miles from Vilna. As political boundaries changed, these places alternated between being located in Russia and in Poland. In U.S. federal census and naturalization records, the members of Abbott’s family identified themselves as Russian Jews and as natives of Poland. Abbott’s father worked for the family’s timber business. After a fire destroyed the family’s house, they lived with Abbott’s maternal grandparents.

Seeking better educational opportunities for his children, in 1872 Abbott’s father immigrated, settling in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, where he adopted the surname Berenson and earned money as a peddler. Abbott, her mother, and two brothers arrived in Boston in 1875. Two sisters were later born in Boston. Secular ideas appealed to Abbott’s father, who demanded his family, fluent in Yiddish and other languages, converse solely in English, stop studying Hebrew, and stop attending synagogue. When the father became a U.S. citizen in 1880, the entire family was naturalized. Abbott attended the Boston Girls’ Latin School and took piano classes at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Back problems prevented her from sitting for long-duration practices. In 1890, Abbott reluctantly enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics to strengthen her body with Swedish gymnastic exercises. She also took anatomy and other science courses Harvard professors taught to supplement exercise, transforming Abbott’s attitudes regarding exercise and professional aspirations.

Life’s Work

Abbott accepted a position in 1892 teaching physical training at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She stressed the necessity for people to exercise for fun, health, and social interactions. Abbott read an article by James Naismith in the January, 1892, issue of The Triangle; it described basketball, a game he had created for his students in Springfield, Massachusetts, south of Northampton. Because she perceived Naismith’s game to be too vigorous and aggressive for females to play safely, Abbott outlined basketball rules regulating how players could pass a basketball among three zones. Players learning to cooperate was more important to Abbott than competing to win.

Basketball appealed to Abbott’s students, who were accustomed to individual, not team, sports. Abbott arranged a game pitting Smith freshmen against Smith sophomores in March, 1893. News of this initial basketball match involving female players circulated. Soon after the Smith game, other U.S. women’s schools formed teams and played basketball games, deviating from Abbott’s rules to meet their local conditions. Some schools scheduled matches with other teams.

Abbott promoted basketball for intramural play within Smith, not intercollegiate competition. Stressing that physical training that strengthened bodies complemented intellectual exercises that stimulated minds, Abbott asserted that her department was as valuable as academic programs. She encountered criticism from family, colleagues, and community, saying that women playing basketball was inappropriate. Wanting to empower females, Abbott insisted that her innovative concepts reinforced women’s stamina, confidence, and character.

Abbott wrote the article “Basket Ball for Women,” printed in the September, 1894, issue of Physical Education, and several books featuring the sport. Because of variations in rules for women’s basketball, Abbott attended the Conference of Physical Training, held in Springfield, Massachusetts, in June, 1899, to standardize rules. She chaired the women’s rules committee for twelve years. The American Sports Publishing Company hired Abbott to edit Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide for Women, a job she held for sixteen years.

Despite her successes, Abbott, who frequently corresponded with her art historian brother Bernard Berenson, revealed that she experienced anti-Semitism on campus and sometimes felt excluded. On June 15, 1911, she wed Herbert Vaughan Abbott, a Smith literature professor. She stopped teaching at Smith and directed physical education instruction at Mary A. Burnham School until 1921. Five years after her husband’s death in 1929, Abbott moved west, sharing her sister Elizabeth’s home in Santa Barbara, California. Abbott suffered a stroke and died on February 16, 1954.

Significance

Abbott’s contributions provided a foundation for women’s basketball to evolve. Among the first women inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame, Abbott was also honored for her athletic accomplishments by the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Teams representing all levels, from elementary schools through professional leagues, incorporated aspects of Abbott’s vision. Basketball not only enriched players’ health but also provided academic opportunities with athletic scholarships. By 1976, the Olympic Games included women’s basketball. Women’s basketball thrived in the early twenty-first century, when approximately eighty million females participated in the sport internationally.

Bibliography

Berenson, Senda. “The Significance of Basket Ball for Women.” In Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader, edited by Jean O’Reilly and Susan K. Cahn. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Excerpt from Abbott’s writing discusses public perceptions of female athleticism and why she endorsed basketball as the best exercise for females.

Borish, Linda J. “’An Interest in Physical Well-Being Among the Feminine Membership’: Sporting Activities for Women at Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations.” American Jewish History 87, no. 1 (March, 1999): 61-93. Notes Abbott’s role in the introduction and acceptance of basketball by Jewish females and facility directors, who embraced her noncompetitive, team-oriented philosophy.

Melnick, Ralph. Senda Berenson: The Unlikely Founder of Women’s Basketball. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007. Comprehensive biography based on archival records, especially letters between Abbott and her siblings, addresses her experiences as a Jew at Smith College.

Spears, Betty. “Senda Berenson Abbott: New Woman, New Sport.” In A Century of Women’s Basketball: From Frailty to Final Four, edited by Joan S. Hult and Marianna Trekell. Reston, Va.: National Association for Girls and Women in Sport, 1991. Examines Abbott’s pioneering physical education leadership and achievements in context with Progressive Era women reformers.