Field Hockey at the YMCA Training School

As previously discussed (here, here, and here), the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts (now known as Springfield College), began its men's field hockey program in the fall of 1896. All play was intramural, as there were no other schools with which to compete at the time. The annual championship series between the class teams became a hotly anticipated event, and by 1900 the school promoted the games heavily. "The physical department committee have been especially active in trying to make hockey a drawing card this year," according to the November 13, 1900, issue of Nobody's Business, the school newspaper. "Special invitations are being sent out to the neighboring schools and academies to be present at the championship games."

Fact-checking a 113-year-old story

Very soon after beginning my research I came across several versions of the same basic story regarding field hockey’s arrival in the United States. It seems that the sport was quite popular among men and women in England during the late 19th Century, but it wasn’t played at all in the United States until an English woman named Constance Applebee arrived in 1901. Applebee attended the summer session in physical training at Harvard that year, and staged a field hockey demonstration for her fellow students in a courtyard outside the Hemenway Gymnasium. That fall she was invited to six of the Seven Sisters colleges to teach field hockey, at which time it took off as a women’s college sport.