Throwback Feature: Constance Applebee, the Pioneer Woman of Field Hockey
Field hockey is an increasingly popular sport amongst young women, this is all thanks to Constance Applebee. Read about her below!
Before the year 1901, field hockey was unknown to the United States. The first field hockey club was created in 1849 in England, but was only for men. It was deemed too dangerous for females to participate; however, this was disproven as it piqued the interest of many women. Field hockey became a socially acceptable sport for women, thus creating the All England Women’s Hockey Association in 1889! Thanks to Constance Applebee, field hockey spread across the pond to the United States.
Constance M.K. Applebee grew up in Chigwell, Essex, England and was homeschooled by a local clergyman due to her frail and weak physicality. Once she grew older, she attended London’s British College of Physical Education to study physical education out of interest and in order to improve her overall health. In 1901, she came to America to attend a summer course at Harvard University.
During this course, she witnessed the lack of physical activity that the female students were partaking in. So, borrowing sticks and a ball, she began to teach the students and behind the Harvard Gymnasium they played the first female field hockey game in the U.S.
At Vassar College, the director of athletics, Harriet Ballantine, invited Applebee to come and demonstrate the rules of field hockey. After teaching the girls at Vassar, excitement spread like wildfire to the other Northeast women’s schools: Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Radcliffe. Constance Applebee governed the American Field Hockey Association with help from her cofounder, Harriet Ballantine. This all took place in the course of half a year!
In 1904, Applebee began working at Bryn Mawr as the director of outdoor sports. She was there for about 25 years. She helped start the United States Field Hockey Association in 1922, then began a field camp in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.
Throughout her career in athletics, Constance Applebee crossed the Atlantic quite a bit in order to continue to teach young women about field hockey and sportsmanship in both the United States and England. Applebee was the publisher and editor for a women’s sports magazine called Sportwoman, for about 10 years. This was one of the first magazines geared towards female athletes in the U.S.
Constance Applebee used her time here on Earth to pioneer field hockey, women’s sports and women’s sports journalism. Without her, who knows if the sport would be as possible as it is today!