Field Day (Group 4)
Page 84 of the Laura Quayle Scrapbook depicts a flyer and sign notifying students of the sixth annual field day "under the auspices of" the Atheltic Association on the 18th and 19th of March 1918. Field day. The term 'Field Day' originates as a phrase used by the military in the literal sense of the term, of a day spent in field manoevers. It is now commonly used to refer to any event taking place in a field ranging from a hunt to a picnic. In terms of the annual F.S.W.C field day the events consisted of a range of competitive sporting activites for students to participate in and challenge their athletic skills amongst their peers. While the common perception of women within the timeframe instilled a perception of friendly, non-competitive, and cluelessness in the plain of athletic capability these events proved that these students were in it to win it.
The sixth annual field day featured events such as dedicated basketball and baseball games in addition to a wide variety of miscellanious events, many incorporating some genre of foot race, spread over the course of two days. The schedule further contains placeholders for the placements of finishing scores and ranks to be accounted for. Although some of these games are traditional ones we view today such as basketball and baseball a large percentage of these activities seem rather tedious and trivial. Those such as "Basketball Throw" and "Running, Hop-Step and Jump" or even "Model School" that is not of traditional athletic matter. The lack of dedicated activites for these women to take part in is due to the early stages of women's sports that had not yet supported the inclusion of women and frowned upon many of these practices in hopes of safeguarding their modesty.
The early 1900's saw a mass stigmatization of women's involvement in sports as "desexualizing" especially in relation to these activities being incorporated within higher educational practices. This was in coherence with the coupling of a women's partcipiation on higher education as "de-femanizing" as President Theodore Roosevelt believed and preached against American families sending their next generation daughters to college. Ninteenth century America consistantly fueled white masculinity by claiming warfare, capitalism, basketball and baseball without any designated sport for women upon the inaccurate ideals of female's ability to edure pain, injury, and manual labor. With the World War raging America was focused on "protecting" their women to care for the men that made it back alive and reproduce to cover the massive loss of those that didn't.
References:
Martin, G. (n.d.). 'Field day' - the meaning and origin of this phrase. Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/field-day.html
Women's Sports History. (2016, August 04). Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/womens-sports-history