Women's athletics history on display at Centenary College
SHREVEPORT, LA — A new exhibit, Women’s Athletics at Centenary, 1925-present, from the Centenary Archives and Special Collections is now on display online and in the Whited Room lobby of Bynum Commons. It offers a historical overview of the college’s varsity and club sports for women.
The Centenary Women’s Athletic Association was organized in 1925, and its members participated in basketball, tennis, bicycling, swimming, hiking, horseback riding, and other activities. By the 1960s, women were involved in multiple club sports at Centenary, and the college installed gymnastics as its first varsity sport for women during the 1964-1965 academic year. In 1977, the College’s board of trustees appointed a Director of Women’s Athletics, who oversaw the creation of additional women’s varsity teams.
This exhibit includes material from student yearbooks, student newspapers, administrative office records, and alumni magazines. It also includes a soccer media guide depicting Martha Chaney Siskron ‘96, who is being inducted into the college’s Athletic Hall of Fame during Centenary’s Homecoming celebrations in November 2018.
Centenary Archivist Chris Brown ‘01 and student worker Ellen Atkinson ’20, herself a student-athlete, researched and prepared the exhibit.
“The most surprising thing that I came across was that we once had a women’s rifle team,” says Atkinson. “Women have been involved in athletic groups since the 1920s, and I thought it was neat that not only have women’s athletic groups been around for almost 100 years, but also that there was such a wide range of teams.”
The exhibit is on display through December 2018 and is also accessible online at centenary.edu/campus-community/archives/online-exhibits/.
The mission of the Centenary College Archives and Special Collections is to collect, preserve, and make available the historic records of the College and the Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. For more information, contact Chris Brown at 318.869.5462 or archives@centenary.edu.