Spring 2006

Haskell Institute: Ties to the Early History of Basketball
-Susan Washington

Before former Haskell Institute high school students Billy Mills and Jim Thorpe won Olympic gold medals in track and field, and before Thorpe, and George and John Levi helped make football king at Haskell Institute; Haskell was making its mark on early Kansas basketball history. 

Now called Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU), both Haskell and the University of Kansas are located in Lawrence.  While neither university can lay claim to being the birthplace of basketball, both had basketball teams that were led by the man considered the “father of basketball coaching”. 

During the 1909 basketball season, Forrest “Phog” Allen coached the Haskell Institute Indians to 27 of 32 winning games. That season at Haskell is among the 49 seasons of his basketball coaching career.  When he retired in 1956 from KU, he had compiled a career record of 771 – 233 which was the best record of any college basketball coach at the time. (1)

Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. Digital ID: ichicdn s005499   Source: original negative

In the early days of basketball, local, state, and national competitions were being played between teams organized by the “Y” organizations, high schools, and colleges, including men’s teams and women’s teams. 

Before “Phog” Allen came to coach at Haskell, the Indians were already making their mark on early basketball history in the state of Kansas and even the nation. “The Haskell Indians claimed the national championship in 1902”, according to The Indian Leader of March 14, which described the game between the Indians and the M.W.A. team of Independence, Mo., the former claimants of the title.  Other Haskell victims that season were the Universities of Kansas and Nebraska, William Jewell College, the Topeka Y.M.C.A., and the Kansas City Athletic Club.

The Indians established some kind of a record in their 65 to 0 massacre of the athletic club, which The Indian Leader of February 14, 1902, described as ‘interesting if ... one-sided.’".  (2)        

Before coaching at Haskell, Allen had learned the game from the inventor of “basket ball” himself, Dr. James A. Naismith who joined the KU faculty in 1898. 

In the Massachusetts winter of 1981, while a physical education instructor at the Springfield College Y.M.C.A. Training School, Dr. Naismith “invented the game of basket ball, as it was originally called” to offer a sport that could be played inside during the harsh New England winters. (3) 
           
The “basket”, in those initial games, was indeed, two peach baskets nailed to posts at either end of the gym for the goals.  Naismith’s original thirteen rules of basket ball did not make reference to requiring the ball to bounce, nor did the rules list any reference to the technique of dribbling.   However historical accounts note that Naismith chose to use a soccer ball due to its round shape and ability to be dribbled, as opposed to the oblong shaped rugby ball.  Such accounts also describe how enthusiastically Naismith embraced developments brought to his invention by the initial players’ use of dribbling as a technique to more quickly advance the ball in the game. (4)

In those days, the bounce of the soccer/ basketball was derived from the inflated rubber bladder that was encased in leather.  The (ball they) dribbled had links to the “Indians” of the Americas, well before Columbus arrived. (5)  

• http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Phog_Allen
• http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1942_2_evans.htm
• http://www.hoophall.com/halloffamers/Naismith.htm
• http://www.hoophall.com/history/naismith_eulogy.htm
• http://linux1.tlc.north.denver.k12.co.us/~gmoreno/gmoreno/
  Mesoamerican_Ballgame.html