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ADELIA BRAINERD

The Outdoor Woman of Harper’s Bazar

Adelia Kate Brainerd was born August 7, 1872, and died April 10, 1961 at the age of 88. The articles in this volume were written when she was between the ages of 21 to 26 and were published in Harper’s Bazar.

Harper’s Bazar (revised the spelling of its name to Harper’s Bazaar in 1931) was a tabloid-sized weekly newspaper targeting a female audience and consisted primarily of women’s fashions, high-society news and homemaking articles. Athletics and sports reports were rare prior to Adelia’s contributions, other than fashion plates featuring tennis rackets, golf clubs and croquet mallets as props for the models.

The first article in this volume has no byline but is consistent with Adelia’s writing style and subject matter. The following week and subsequent issues added her byline which appeared regularly thereafter. “The Outdoor Woman” column header debuted September 14, 1895.

Her byline credit varied slightly, with or without middle initial or solely using her initials. The column did not appear in every issue and became more sporadic in its final year. At the end of 1898 her column heading changed to “Exercise” for her final five credited articles of the 19th century, ending with the issue dated June 3, 1899, two months before she was married.

The 123 articles in this volume cover a wide range of sports, the most frequent of which are bicycling and golf. Her bicycle articles often explore in depth the machinery, gears, accessories, proper attire, touring routes and physical exertion of riding. Her golf articles cover several prominent tournaments, course layouts, implements, and many of the most famous women players from the first decade of women’s golf.

She also wrote about archery, badminton, basketball, bowling, camping, canoeing, cricket, equestrianism, fencing, ice hockey, ice skating, lawn bowling, physical fitness, rifles, roller skating, rowing, skiing, snowshoeing, swimming, tennis, walking, water polo, yachting (sailing), sportsmen’s shows, horse shows and the Westminster dog show.

In 1895 she penned a 3-part series of articles about women’s college sports, “Physical Culture in Women’s Colleges,” focusing on athletics at Wellesley, Smith College, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Cornell, Wells College, and the University of Wisconsin.

Adelia’s articles include many references to sports fashion from head to toe for many sports and types of physical activities. She also describes such obscure and obsolete sports as slack wire, hand polo, Lang ball, and curtain ball. The publication dates, sports subjects and page numbers of the articles are listed in the Table of Contents.

This volume includes one article about cycling credited to Adelia that was published September 17, 1897, in the Waterbury Evening Democrat newspaper in Waterbury, Connecticut.

There is scant biographical information about Adelia Brainerd prior to her marriage to writer Clinton Wallace Gilbert on August 5, 1899, after which the name “Mrs. Gilbert” often appeared in articles as an attendee or sponsor of various social functions, but not by the name “Adelia,” nor in relation to athletics. She may have continued to write and publish but not under her maiden name. Her husband, brother and sister-in-law were all prominent writers. Adelia’s biographical information below is culled from other publications.

An article in the October-November 1922 issue of the University of Rochester alumni periodical Rochester Review, entitled “Gilbert, the Unexpected,” by Garret Smith, features Adelia’s husband, Clinton Wallace Gilbert, the Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and the author of the book Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington, and includes a brief mention of Adelia:

“…In the meantime, some years before this, there had been a charming young woman, Miss Adelia Brainerd, employed on the paper. The bachelor Beau Brummels of the shop preened themselves considerably before her, I am told, and entered into a spirited competition for her favor. They didn’t seem to regard the shy shaggy exchange editor as a rival until they woke up one morning and found he had married the lady. That, too, was unexpected but not sudden….”

A significant event in Adelia’s life was the death of her brother, Chauncey Corey Brainerd, and his wife Edith Rathbone Jacobs Brainerd, in the Knickerbocker Theatre disaster on January 29, 1922, in Washington, D. C., when the snow-laden roof collapsed onto the moviegoing audience, killing 98 and injuring more than one hundred others. Chauncey was the Washington correspondent of the Brooklyn Eagle; his wife authored several books and articles under the pen name E. J. Rath. Adelia was mentioned as “Mrs. Clinton Gilbert” in the February 4, 1922, Brooklyn Life obituary: “Mr. Brainerd is survived by his sister, Mrs. Clinton Gilbert, of Plainfield, N. J.”

Adelia’s obituary was published April 11, 1961, in The Courier-News, Bridgewater, New Jersey:

“Mrs. Clinton Gilbert: Mrs. Adelia Brainerd Gilbert of 911 W. Seventh St., widow of Clinton W. Gilbert, died yesterday (Apr. 10, 1961) at the Abbott Manor Nursing Home, Central Ave., after an illness of one year. Mrs. Gilbert was born in New York. She lived here since 1917. She leaves three sons, Geoffrey of Wayne, Roger of Greenwich, Conn., and Clinton, at home; two daughters, Mrs. Blake Roberts of Greenwich Conn., and Miss Lois Gilbert, at home; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Services will be conducted tomorrow at 2 p. m. at the A. M. Runyon & Son Funeral Home by the Rev. Nicholas Cardell, pastor of the Plainfield Unitarian Church, of which she was a member. Burial will be in Hillside Cemetery.”

Adelia’s articles from Harper’s Bazar contain variant spellings of practise/practice; all have been modernized to “practice” in this volume. Other antiquated spellings have likewise been updated, e.g. woollen, equalled; “staid” to “stayed”; decimal points inserted in prices, e.g. “1 50” to “1.50”; and golf “put” to golf “putt.” The writing conventions of not capitalizing “city” (New York city) and “street” (Twenty-third street) have been retained.

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DIANA’S BALL SPORTS

Baseball – Basketball – Billiards – Bowling – Cricket – Croquet – Football – Golf – Tennis

“Athletic Woman” was the first weekly sports column written by a woman published in a major American newspaper, the Sunday edition ofThe Philadelphia Inquirer, from 1898 to 1901. The author wrote under the pseudonym “Diana.” Her real name was Mary J. Lagen, although she never revealed her identity in her column. Her brief biography is appended below the four volume introductions.

Diana was the most prolific writer in the Sports She Wrote series. As a result, her articles are divided into four volumes, curated thematically and presented chronologically: (1) Diana’s Ball Sports; (2) Diana’s Outdoor Sports; (3) Diana’s Fitness, Fashion & Beauty; and (4) Diana’s Anecdotes & Aphorisms.

Organization by subject rather than date of publication was chosen due to the free-flowing format of her column which often veered between multiple topics. The four volumes provide the totality of her columns and sports reports in more than 150 issues of the Inquirer.

In This Volume

Diana’s Ball Sports features 152 articles covering nine sports in the following order: baseball, basketball, billiards, bowling, cricket, croquet, football, tennis and golf.

Diana became an avid golfer in her forties and covered the sport in great detail. This volume includes approximately 92,000 words (102 articles) about golf and 20,000 words (50 articles) about all other ball sports combined. Due to its predominance golf is presented last, subdivided by years. All other ball sports are listed alphabetically, with articles in each sport arranged in chronological order. In addition to her weekly column Diana’s reports on the women’s national golf championship held in Philadelphia were published on the regular sports pages and are included in this volume.

During Diana’s era the modern golf tee had not yet been invented. At the teeing ground of each hole was a bucket of sand and a bucket of water for forming a tiny mud mound as a tee, which was generally constructed by the caddie. Clubs were named rather than numbered (cleek, lofter, mashie, niblick, spoon, and the inconsistently spelled brassie/brassy/brassey), a nomenclature which endured into the 1940s. A stymie is an obsolete rule in which a player’s ball is blocked from the hole by another player’s ball (a rule eliminated in 1952).

Diana’s golf articles include many references to fashion, some of which have been moved to Diana’s Fitness, Fashion & Beauty.

The remaining 50 articles and their number in each sport are: baseball (1 article); basketball (5); billiards (2); bowling (11); cricket (7); croquet (5); football (5); and tennis (14). Several articles focus on sports played by college women.

Ball Sports are featured in four other volumes of the Sports She Wrote series: (1) Ball Sports; (2) Ella Black (baseball); (3) Helen Dauvray (baseball); and (4) Adelia Brainerd, The Outdoor Woman of Harper’s Bazar.

Style Guide

Diana’s clever wordplay includes references to mythological gods, colorful turns of phrases and unfamiliar terms, samples of which in this volume include:

• Sol = sun god in Roman mythology.
• Hebe = goddess of youth.
• Boreas = god of winter and ice; the north wind.
• Jupiter Pluvius = aspect of the god Jupiter as the sender of rain.
• Comus = god of festivity.
• Reynard = fox.
• Trap = a two-wheeled buggy pulled by a horse.
• Toilet = grooming.
• Golfeuse = a woman golfer.
• Aqua fortis = strong water (liquor).
• Fin de siecle = end of the century.
• A Roland for an Oliver = retaliation, a blow for a blow.
• White Ribboners = symbol of women’s temperance movement.

Text in bold font in the body of the articles is intended for quick reference and potential points of interest for modern readers and was not printed in bold font in the original articles.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Some obsolete spelling forms have been silently updated for clarity, e.g., employes updated to employees, “rythm” to “rhythm,” and “put” changed to “putt” when relevant; other antiquated usages have been retained, e.g., basket ball, every one, to-day, to-morrow, and New York city.

Trigger Warning

The most disturbing aspect of nineteenth century publications is the racial and ethnic slurs that were commonly prevalent and considered acceptable at the time. Fortunately, Diana uses very few of these, but there are examples that will trouble modern readers with enlightened sensibilities. Her words have not been altered and in most cases the reader is forewarned that a given article contains triggering language.

Suffice to say that almost everyone from the era was racially and culturally insensitive by modern standards—her column began two years after the “Separate But Equal” doctrine was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court and one hundred years before the arrival of political correctness—and the preeminence of white Anglo culture was presumed to be appropriate and indisputable.

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DIANA’S OUTDOOR SPORTS

Field Sports – Bicycling – Equestrianism – Water Sports – Winter Sports – Automobiles

Diana’s Outdoor Sports features 217 articles about field sports, equestrianism, wheel sports, water sports and winter sports.

The first section of this volume is headed “Field Sports” with 54 articles related to hunting, fishing, camping, guns, nature, dogs and birds. Diana enjoyed many outdoor pursuits and wrote appreciably about men and women who engaged in them, as well as her own personal experiences in the great outdoors. Some articles on hunting include references to horseback riding.

The second section focuses on equestrianism (48 articles), riding horseback, driving carriages, and attending horse shows. It was a transitional era in which most women still rode sidesaddle although some were beginning to ride astride. The bicycle and the automobile were also superseding the horse as primary means of transportation. The annual Horse Show at Madison Square Garden was a major social event that was as renowned for the stylish gowns adorning the female flesh of the celebrity attendees as for the coats and manes of the horseflesh in the arena. Paragraphs that dwell on the two-legged swells of well-heeled society rather than the four-legged iron-hoofed beasts of burden can be found in Diana’s Fitness, Fashion & Beauty.

The third section presents the mode of transportation that supplanted the horse, the bicycle, colloquially known as the “silent steed.” The scale and impact of the bicycle fad in America was so vast in the final decades of the nineteenth century that nine additional volumes of the Sports She Wrote series are devoted to it.

For Diana, or more accurately, Mary Lagen, before she became a writer, bicycling was her first major entrée into sports, and it was as a bicycling pioneer that her name first became known. Mary’s sons excelled at bicycle racing, setting records in Philadelphia, which prompted Mary to try her hand at the two-wheeled contraption. She became well-known locally as the best and boldest woman bicycle rider in the city.

The first 20 articles in the bicycling section pre-date her identification as Diana of the “Athletic Woman” column, published from 1894 to 1897. She was the subject rather than the writer of these articles, although one article quotes her extensively regarding women on wheels.

As described in the articles, Mary designed a bifurcated bicycle skirt for women riders, establishing a design that became the standard upon which many women’s bicycle outfits were patterned. Women’s bicycling fashions, and particularly their skirts, are prominent subjects in several volumes of Sports She Wrote. The necessity of independent leg movement for pedaling a bicycle was one of the most influential factors in the women’s dress reform movement of the 19th century.

During this time, Mary Lagen brought a lawsuit against an athletic club of which she had been a member that changed its bylaws to ban women members. She lost the lawsuit but gained notoriety for her stance on women’s participation in athletics.

As a columnist Diana used her bicycle experiences to write knowledgeably about every aspect of wheeling. The remainder of the bicycling section (47 articles) covers a wide range of cycling subjects as listed in the Table of Contents. As always, fashion was a common topic, as well as societal and mechanical issues that women riders encountered.

Diana was an active outdoorswoman and the remaining sections of this volume include 10 articles about sports on ice and snow, 14 articles about swimming, 12 articles about boating, and 12 articles about the dawn of automobiles, including her first exhilarating ride. Segments of her articles focusing primarily on swimwear and ice-skating fashions have been moved to the volume Diana’s Fitness, Fashion & Beauty.

Outdoor Sports are featured in twenty other volumes of the Sports She Wrote series, including nine on cycling, six on field sports, three on equestrianism, the volume Water & Ice, and portions of Adelia Brainerd, The Outdoor Woman of Harper’s Bazar.

Style Guide

Diana’s clever wordplay includes references to mythological gods, colorful turns of phrases and unfamiliar terms, samples of which in this volume include:

• Sol = sun god in Roman mythology.
• Boreas = god of winter and ice; the north wind.
• Jupiter Pluvius = aspect of the god Jupiter as the sender of rain.
• Reynard = fox.
• Boniface = proprietor of a hotel or restaurant
• Mother Carey and her Chickens = folkloric personification of storms
• Jehu = a fast-driving reckless coachman
• Jove = alternative name for the god Jupiter
• “lucre to conflagrate” = money to burn
• Trap = a two-wheeled buggy pulled by a horse (when not referring to hunting traps and trap shooting).
• Toilet = grooming.
• Fin de siecle = end of the century.

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DIANA’S FITNESS, FASHION & BEAUTY

Exercise – Athletics – Muscle – Boxing – Fencing – Dancing – Sportswear – Health – Diet – Aging

Diana’s Fitness, Fashion & Beauty features 213 articles presented in the following categories: fitness & athletics (60), fencing (12), boxing (5), dance (5), fashion (91), and beauty (40).

Diana was a strong proponent of physical fitness and athletics for women. She advocated exercise and good health as foundational aspects of well-rounded womanhood and lifelong happiness, as well as fundamental aspects of female beauty. Her devotion to fashion, diet, beauty and health endured for years beyond her “Athletic Woman” column, as she later became one of the first women editors of the “Woman’s Page” in a major American newspaper.

As a mother in her late forties with two adult sons, Diana admitted to battling issues with her weight, identifying with many of her readers, referring to it as “embonpoint” a dozen times and “fat” two dozen times. She also shares the ravages of aging, with advice regarding wrinkles, sleep, diet, and the right frame of mind for aging gracefully. This philosophy served her well, as she was only at the halfway point in her long life and gave interviews in her eighties and nineties (printed in Diana’s Anecdotes & Aphorisms) extolling the same virtues she recommended in her column decades earlier.

Fencing and boxing are included based on their function as developers of grace, strength, stamina and coordination, rather than their aggressive and competitive characteristics. Diana relates her joy at receiving a punching bag for Christmas, accompanied by photographs that appear to be her in action.

Dance is briefly mentioned, including an anecdote in 1899 praising the women dance instructors who calmly ushered their class of children out of a deadly hotel fire without the screaming panic often attributed to women in a crisis. She does not state the names of the heroic instructors who were not yet famous—they were Isadora Duncan and her sister and mother.

Fashion is a primary consideration in several women’s sports, including bicycling, golf, tennis, swimming, croquet, hunting, horseback riding, and general athletic exercises. Most of the fashion excerpts in this volume have been culled from other volumes on their particular topics to avoid repetition. Diana also wrote about fashion in general, unrelated to its sports connection, and comprises the bulk of the articles in this volume.

Sports were the most influential factor in the women’s dress reform movement of the 19th century. The bulky confining fashions of the era restricted movement to the extent that exercising, bicycle riding, swimming and other athletic pursuits were impossible without adapting specialized sportswear.

Physical fitness, also referred to as physical culture, was widely recognized as beneficial for women who had formerly been cast as frail, fainting, ethereal wilting willows. The 1890s ushered in an era of strong, upright, confident athletic women, the glorified epitome of which was envisioned by the celebrated caricature, the Gibson Girl.

While Charles Dana Gibson’s pen drew an idealized version, the real so-called “New Woman” shunned wasp-waisted corsets in exchange for freedom of movement to swing a golf club, donned bloomers and knickerbockers to play basketball, and wore tennis shoes and thick-soled round-toed shoes to run and walk comfortably.

Many in society were aghast at these new fashions and behaviors, labelling the New Woman mannish and unladylike, and by the turn of the century the backlash against the brief flourishing of feminine empowerment and sports participation of the 1890s took hold—a hindrance which dominated American culture until the advent of Title IX in 1973, and the echoes of which reverberate in some circles today.

The final section in this volume focuses on beauty. Diana believed all women wanted to be beautiful and many of her motivations for diet, exercise, and health were to be found in the mirror and in men’s eyes (and women’s eyes as well, for she openly granted that other women were often the harshest critics of the sisterhood). She wrote of beauty regimens for complexions, weight loss, wrinkles, and other maladies that transcend generations.

Physical Fitness is the primary subject in three other volumes of the Sports She Wrote series: (1) Physical Fitness & Culture; (2) Fitness, Fashion, Grace & Beauty; and (3) 7 Fitness Manuals; as well as portions of Adelia Brainerd, The Outdoor Woman of Harper’s Bazar. Fashion is the primary subject in the volume What to Wear, and references to women’s sporting garb can be found in nearly every volume of the series.

Style Guide

Diana’s clever wordplay includes references to mythological gods, colorful turns of phrases and unfamiliar terms, samples of which in this volume include:

• Sol = sun god in Roman mythology.
• Hebe = goddess of youth.
• Boreas = god of winter and ice; the north wind.
• Neptune = Roman god of the sea.
• Fin de siecle = end of the century.
• Toilet = grooming.
• Neglige = a man’s robe or night dressing gown.

Text in bold font in the body of the articles is intended for quick reference and potential points of interest for modern readers and was not printed in bold font in the original articles.

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DIANA’S ANECDOTES & APHORISMS

Men & Women – I Am Woman – Clubs & Resorts – Wartime – Diana on Stage – Diana’s Play

In her “Athletic Woman” column, Diana wrote about more than sports. She included social commentary, relationship advice, recipes, anecdotes, and hundreds of aphorisms, all of which are featured in this volume. Any relationship to sports is tangential and only relates insofar as it is part of her “Athletic Woman” column, and lends insight into the writer’s life, character, and personality. Readers solely interested in sports may not find this volume germane; readers interested in the woman behind the column will find it indispensable. All readers would find it fascinating, as she was a delightful and talented writer whose work deserves to be appreciated and preserved.

Diana’s Anecdotes & Aphorisms features 191 articles, 634 aphorisms, and one stage play written in 1904 as her career veered into acting on stage when she was in her fifties.

These non-sports-related articles are grouped by general subject matter under the following six headings: Men & Women (32 articles); I Am Woman (35); Potpourri; (62); Clubs & Resorts (18); Wartime (7); and Diana on Stage (37).

The headings are created for the purpose of organization in this volume, not designated by Diana. Her column meandered between multiple topics without any headings, and oftentimes without a paragraph break to indicate a change of subject. The division of her column into four distinct volumes in this series and sorted into sub-categories is intended to display her writing for the modern reader and historical researcher to peruse by category.

Diana’s insight into male-female relationships is informed by her personal experience as a wife and mother, which she relates in many articles, and is further revealed in the stage play at the end of this volume. Similarly, her perspective on women is based on her own self-reflective identity in a rapidly evolving cultural setting as well as a writer’s keen observational eye regarding other women at the end of the 19th century.

“Wartime” refers to the Spanish-American War in 1898, which disrupted American life for one summer. It was the shortest war in American history, lasting just 113 days, but transformed the United States into a global power. Between 1890 and 1900, the United States terminated the Indian Wars (which had lasted three centuries); annexed the Hawaiian Islands; and in the Spanish-American war added Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and The Philippines to its territory. Diana wrote about the war, veterans, patriotism, victory parades, and the dearth of men at resorts.

Soon after her weekly Sunday column began, Diana closed her missives with a selection of aphorisms under the heading “Shots at Random Sent,” totaling more than 600 by the time her column ended in 1901.

Her career mirrored society’s reaction to the “New Woman” phenomenon and the backlash that led to decades of the decline in women’s sports after the turn of the century. In 1901 she abandoned the “Athletic Woman” column and became the “Woman’s Page” editor, focusing on recipes, fashion, homemaking, and other domestic subjects, nearly abandoning sports entirely.

After the “Athletic Woman” column ended and during her stint as Woman’s Page editor, Diana embarked on a second career—a rare move for a woman in her early fifties with an established reputation—she became a well-regarded comedic actress in Broadway plays using the hybrid name Diana Huneker. She was also involved in the nascent motion picture industry although never attained fame or leading roles.

Several articles in this volume outline her acting career, including positive reviews and mention of a play that she co-wrote as “M. J. Lagen” with another woman author, Cally Ryland in 1904. This play, entitled “Daphne and Her Lad,” is included at the end of this volume. It consists of romantic letters between two newspaper editors. It has nothing to do with sports but reveals intriguing insights into her life and loves and is rife with fascinating parallels to her own career and personal relationships.

This volume includes published interviews with Diana when she was age 84 and another at age 92. They provide excellent biographical content about her life and philosophy that kept her young and active. Although they barely mention her “Athletic Woman” column, which was but a brief blip in her impressive career, anyone reading her column in these four volumes would recognize that it was a significant influence in a long life well lived.

She died in 1946 at age 94. Her ashes were scattered into the Atlantic Ocean from an airplane.

About Cally Ryland Cally Thomas Ryland (1871-1947), Diana’s co-author of the play “Daphne and Her Lad,” was a well-known Southern author and poet. Her father was a Confederate soldier. She became a writer and society editor for the Richmond News Leader soon after her father’s death. Her father died May 27, 1903, mirroring the experience of one of the two characters in the play. Unfortunately for her historical legacy, Cally’s writing later adopted the fictional persona “Aunt Jemimy,” which is clearly racist by today’s standards, written in dialect, published in 1907, in a book of folk wisdom entitled Aunt Jemimy’s Maxims. (Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix and the vaudeville parody character by the same name preceded Cally’s character by at least two decades.)

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Brief Biographical Note About “Diana”

Diana often wrote about personal and family matters but never revealed her identity in her “Athletic Woman” column. She was born Mary Julia Huneker in Philadelphia in 1852 and became Mary Lagen upon her marriage in 1874 to John Lagen, a prominent attorney.

Mary was exposed to art and culture from a young age. Her parents lived in an artistic community in Philadelphia and her brother became one of the country’s most respected music and theater critics, James Gibbons Huneker. By her own account, Mary was raised with a conventional Catholic upbringing, trained to be a homemaker.

Her two sons became athletes, setting local records in cycling. Their sporting interests inspired Mary to join their athletic hobbies. She was a bicycling pioneer (described in the volume Diana’s Outdoor Sports), became addicted to the game of golf (described in Diana’s Ball Sports), and enjoyed swimming and other outdoor sports.

Mary adopted the penname “Diana” (goddess of the hunt) for her weekly “Athletic Woman” column, which she began at the age of 46, and retained the moniker when she transitioned to editor of the “Woman’s Page” for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1901. She remained “Diana” in ensuing syndicated articles and began an acting career in her fifties with the stage name “Diana Huneker” (described in the volume Diana’s Anecdotes & Aphorisms).

She lived a long, active, fulfilling life. She was a teenager when the Civil War ended and lived beyond World War II. She died in 1946 at the age of 94. Her ashes were scattered into the Atlantic Ocean from an airplane. Her final interviews, when she was in her eighties and nineties, and her obituary are printed in Diana’s Anecdotes & Aphorisms.

Her literary output as “Athletic Woman” was vast, averaging over 2,000 words per week. Occasionally she reprinted segments from previous columns, usually with some variation. These instances have been noted in the text and retained for reference. Her writing style tended toward run-on sentences, and some less-than-stellar typesetting by the Inquirer print crew renders some portions difficult to follow, as when quotes are opened but lack terminating end-quotes. Several such errors are silently corrected in these volumes or are noted when unresolved.

Diana did not write the headlines accompanying her column. They were inserted by the Inquirer editors and spoke of “Diana” in the third person. In one instance she takes issue with the tone of her editor’s headline. In fact, Diana reveals her real personality readily, both positively and negatively, sometimes as a glowing fangirl and other times as a snarky mean girl. It both humanizes and makes her column a delight to read and well worth preserving in the history of women’s sports.

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