Mabel Lee and Louise Pound: The University of Nebraska's Battle over Women's Intercollegiate Athletics

Authors

Kristi Lowenthal, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

First Advisor

Benjamin G. Rader

Date of this Version

7-1999

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

A thesis presented to the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Major: History

Under the supervision of Professor Benjamin G. Rader

Lincoln, Nebraska, July 1999

Comments

Copyright 1999, Kristi Lowenthal. Used by permission

Abstract

Mirroring a cultural shift that brought the American middle class from the Victorian era into the modern era, women's intercollegiate sports encountered stiff resistance from the two overlapping social groups. Mabel Lee, a woman physical educator, brought firmly held Victorian beliefs about feminine propriety and moderation to the University of Nebraska when she was hired as the head of the women's physical education department in 1924. Louise Pound, an English professor at the University, had for years excelled in highly competitive athletics as a member of the new modern middle class. Pound flouted Victorian restraints and refused to enter the women's "separate sphere" of household duties, choosing instead to defeat both men and women at golf, tennis, cycling, and a variety of different sports.

Lee rejected intercollegiate sports for women, finding them intemperate, elitist, and socially suspect. Pound rejected Lee's substituted intramural sports as boring and weak. The two women turned their professional disagreement into a life-long feud, involving their friends and colleagues as allies against each other. Lee maintained numerous objections to intercollegiate sport. First, she thought women's varsity sports would encounter the same evils as men's varsity sports, namely, a "win-at-all-costs" attitude, special privileges for star athletes, and relaxed academic standards. Second, she refused to give up any of her hard-won turf as a woman physical educator to male coaches and administrators ofwomen's varsity teams. Third, Lee feared that varsity sports would skim off the best women, leaving her department with only the weak or the disinterested.

Backed by her professional physical education organizations, Lee and her Victorian sports philosophy triumphed early as she persuading large numbers of colleges to abandon intercollegiate athletics for women in favor of intramural contests moderated by professional women physical educators like herself. Although Pound died in 1958, her modern view of uninhibited sports for women was eventually vindicated by Title IX, relegating Lee's beloved physical education once again to the fringes of academic institutions.

Advisor: Benjamin G. Rader