April 15, 1922

In a “fast and furious” game at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, Vassar defeated Smith College 27 to 18 in the first intercollegiate basketball game between teams representing women’s colleges. Nearly 4,000 spectators, most of them sporting touches of either Vassar’s rose and gray or the white and gold of Smith, watched as teams of alumnae from the two colleges played a game that The New York Times called “fast and furious from the start.”

“Smith,” said the Times, “was possibly a bit better organized in the singing and had three cheer leaders to Vassar’s one. But the supporters of the Poughkeepsie college, on the other hand, were able to produce the greater volume of noise when it came to cheering on the players.”

Vassar’s team consisted of Elizabeth Harden ’16, Anne Goss ’21, Ruth Goss ’14, Emma Downer Hardin ’16, Gertrude Farnham ’16 and Margot Hesse ’21. Most of the players on both teams were from the New York metropolitan area.