Mabel Lee and Louise Pound : The University of Nebraska's Battle over Women's Intercollegiate Athletics

Mirroring a cultural shift that brought the American middle class from the Victorian era into the modern era, women's intercollegiate sports encountered stiff resistance from the two overlapping social groups. Mabel Lee, a woman physical educator, brought firmly held Victorian beliefs about feminine propriety and moderation to the University of Nebraska when she was hired as the head of the women's physical education department in 1924. Louise Pound, an English professor at the University, had for years excelled in highly competitive athletics as a member of the new modern middle class. Pound flouted Victorian restraints and refused to enter the women's "separate sphere" of household duties, choosing instead to defeat both men and women at golf, tennis, cycling, and a variety of other sports. Lee rejected intercollegiate sports for women, finding them intemperate, elitists and socially suspect. Pound rejected Lee's substituted intramural sports as boring and weak. The two women turned their professional disagreement into a life-long feud, involving their friends and colleagues as allies against each other.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB OH is the author of 'Mabel Lee and Louise Pound : The University of Nebraska's Battle over Women's Intercollegiate Athletics', published 1999 under ISBN 9781423543367 and ISBN 142354336X.