by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, November 18, 2022.
Three cheers for Exeter’s field hockey team! Exeter’s girls have been a force in the game since the early 20th century. Before Exeter High School was coed, before the teams were named the “Blue Hawks,” before there were varsity sports for girls, before Title IX opened athletics through law, the girls of Exeter’s Robinson Female Seminary played field hockey. Their toughest challenge was finding other teams to play.
Hockey, as a sport, is very old. There are images of clubbing sports played with sticks and balls on the walls in ancient Egypt. Wray Vamplew, author of Games People Played: A Global History of Sport, tells us that the more modern version evolved during the later 19th century in Britain. “It was built on the previous century’s more violent, localized versions, which centered on the Royal Military College at Sandhurst and various public schools (which, in our sense, were private boarding schools).” The violence of the game – hard, often wooden, ball, clubbed toward the goal with a hefty bat – was most likely the reason it was considered a boys’ game. The first organized club was the Blackburn Hockey Club in the UK in 1861, which was just about the same time Americans were developing baseball while fighting the Civil War. British imperialism took the game worldwide during the following decades, and the men’s’ version was included in early Olympic games.
British women began playing the game, perhaps thinking it was a slightly more vigorous version of croquet, which was also played with a hard ball and mallet. It was not like croquet. Rules were adapted to make the game slightly less murderous, but the excitement endured. The Moseley Ladies’ Hockey Club formed in 1887.
Field hockey, which was so designated to differentiate it from ice hockey, came to the United States in 1901, when British physical education instructor, Constance Applebee, took a tour of the Seven Sisters colleges and brought the sport along. These institutions, Vassar, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Radcliff and Wheaton, eagerly adopted the game.
In Exeter, where our high schools were segregated by sex, the girls attended the Robinson Female Seminary. When the school was first organized it was believed that physical activity could be harmful to young ladies. However, it was also understood that fresh air and sunlight were beneficial. The grounds of the Seminary were landscaped to encourage an appreciation of nature. As the 20th century rolled along, the girls were encouraged to take brisk walks to improve health. Physical education became part of the curriculum with the introduction of basketball and gymnastics. As a feeder school for the Seven Sisters, interest in field hockey at the Robinson Seminary began to grow.
The Seminarian first mentions field hockey as an inter-class activity in the fall of 1924. Teams from the sophomore, junior and senior classes competed against one another in a series of games. The juniors won every match. Play at this level continued for years as it was difficult for the girls to find other teams to play. They called themselves a ‘varsity’ team in 1927 after playing Brewster Academy in Wolfboro. The return game had to be cancelled due to muddy field conditions in Exeter. In 1929 the only opposing team they could find was the Newburyport YMCA. The following years found the girls primarily playing four games per season, although in 1931 they also played a game against their own alumnae. The alumnae players won, which couldn’t have been a surprise. RFS players – like Marie Finn and Marjorie Smith, who both played for the University of New Hampshire, were moving up in collegiate play. By that season, the girls were more organized and were sporting snazzy uniforms jaunty knit caps.
Post-World War II teams continued to play well. The RFS players were undefeated in both 1948 and 1949. The yearbook, Pinnacle, read, “Approximately two weeks after returned from our summer vacation, the first notice for hockey practice appeared on the home room blackboards of the four upper classes. For days the clashing of sticks and flying of dust could be seen on the hockey field. After the final squad had been chosen, the girls settled down for some real rugged practicing.”
Then, as now, this is no sport for the faint-hearted. Many of us first encounter the game in gym class when handed an unfamiliar wooden club (right-handed only), flimsy shin guards and maybe, if you’re lucky, encouragement to wear a mouth guard. With only the briefest of instruction, and the realization that this is essentially soccer with weapons, field hockey brings out the fierceness that abides in most of us.
The Robinson Seminary graduated its final class in 1955. That fall, the team played for Exeter High School. They have remained a strong team ever since.
Barbara Rimkunas is co-executive director of the Exeter Historical Society. In 1978, she was hit in the head with a field hockey ball during gym class on the day Pope John Paul I died. Congratulations, Exeter Field Hockey 2022. You girls rock.
Image: Robinson Female Seminary field hockey team in 1931 (afraid of nothing): Jessie Wiggin, Marguerite O’Brien, Margaret Kucharski, Barbara Hubley, Betsey Crowell, Dorothy Pinkham, Mildred Tilton, Amelia Mazalewski, Victoria Kopka, Elizabeth DeRoche, Constance Bernier, and Stacia Krol