Navigation Menu+

Vanderbilt Women’s Basketball Team

William Gustav Thuss
1914
Photograph
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

In 1897, Stella Vaughn led Vanderbilt’s first women’s basketball team to victory in bloomers and blouses, shielded from the eyes of men by blocked windows. A male Hustler reporter wrote that he anticipated “scratching and hair-pulling and… a half-dozen screams.” The accolades and respect earned by Vanderbilt’s nine official women’s sports teams have proven this author greatly underestimated female athletes.