December 31 (1909)

The first known mention of women playing soccer in St. Louis appears in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Jan. 2, 1910. Mamie Wolford, Emma Schirby, May O’Hara, Florence Davenport, Katie Schmuckle, Monie Egan, Katie Woods, Maggie Fromme, Hulda Sauter, and Zoe and Maude Vandewert play for the “North End Girls” against the “North St. Louis Men” for a 10-minute game begun at 11:55 p.m. on Dec. 31 at Green Lee and Clay avenues to ring in the new year. The short news item reports that neither team scored. Forty-one years will pass before St. Louis sees its first organized soccer for women: the Craig Club Girls Soccer League. Players ages 16-22 will comprise the rosters of four teams that will play in 1951-52. “The novel experiment of girls playing what heretofore had been a man’s game attracted several hundred early morning risers,” Marion Milton will write about a Craig Club match in the St. Louis Star-Times in 1951. “Fullbacks charged hard and fouls committed led to four of the five goals in the 10:30 a.m. opening game.” Dorothy “Dot” Gilda, a Craig Club player, will tell Dave Lange in a 2010 interview that “We didn’t want to be treated differently. We wanted to play the game the way it was supposed to be played.” Female soccer in St. Louis will begin in earnest when the Catholic Youth Council will open its sports programs to females in the late 1960s.