Basketball at Misericordia

Basketball was an important part of the sports offerings at Misericordia since the school’s founding. Against the backdrop of the 1920s and changes in attitude about women’s rights, education, and behavior, new avenues in collegiate and Olympic sports opened up for women. Physical education was a significant extracurricular activity for the students at Misericordia, who could choose from individual sports like archery, riding, and table tennis, to team sports like basketball and later field hockey.

Sports were played intramurally until about the mid- to late-1930s, when Misericordia began playing other local schools like Marywood College (now Marywood University) and attending statewide conferences, particularly for field hockey. 

Prior to Title IX’s (1972) rule changes that reassigned player tactics, statistics were kept differently for women’s basketball. Assists were not recorded. Until the early 1980s, many women’s basketball teams adhered to six-on-six rules, in which only forwards could shoot; all shots were worth two points (no 3-point shots); and forwards remained in their team’s front court, while guards remained in the back court. Dorothy “Dot” Monahan Callahan (Class of 1956) noted that this “old lady basketball […] made you sharp” and fostered teamwork.