Women’s Basket Ball, the forerunner to netball, had been played in schools and churches for several years up until this point. The formation of the first Women’s Basket Ball Association in Perth saw a formal change in how the sport was played and organised in the State.
In its early days, netball was created and played as a modified version of basketball for women, adhering to societal views regarding what a woman morally should or should not do. Other sports like men’s basketball, or the developing Australian Rules Football both were seen as too physical and inappropriate for women to play.
On November 16, 1920, the President of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) Patroness Lady Elizabeth Newdegate formally opened the YWCA hostel. Four years later, the hostel’s back lawns became the venue for the first official games of the Perth Women’s Basketball Association.
The first season of netball began on July 12, 1924, and commenced with 10 teams playing on a Saturday afternoon. The first round of the season was advertised in ‘The West Australian’ on the same day as the matches.
The competition was made up of three teams from the YWCA, ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams from Maylands and Ross Memorial Methodist Church, an Anglican Church team from Guilford and two from North Perth.
The inaugural season of the competition was played weekly from mid-July to mid-October, with the first premiership being won by a YWCA team. The members of the first winning team were Eileen Lewis, Muriel Inkpen, Phoebe Harms, Rosie White, Margaret Paul, Nellie Simenson and Doris Turner.
The first organised netball games played in WA may look vastly different than they do now, but these origins have crafted the standards by which Netball WA is held to today, 100 years later.
Photo courtesy of the State Library of Western Australia.
