The Girls Were First!
 In
1898, the girls of Lansing High School formed a basketball team.
According to all available evidence, it was the first organized high
school basketball team in Michigan history. The team was unbeaten in its
first season, defeating a team from Michigan Agricultural College (now
Michigan State University) three times.
On February 5, the girls of the B.B.T. gave a supper at the new
armory, and were well patronized, as a result of which they have paid
for their baskets, and have partly paid for their suits, which are wine
colored trimmed with white braid.
— Lansing High School Oracle, 1898
Girls at high schools in Ann Arbor, Port Huron and Grand Rapids also organized
teams before their male counterparts.
(Photo from the Lansing High School Oracle school yearbook. Front row, left to right: Kate Maltry,
Florence Gitchell, Minnie Losky, Chloe Goodrich; Back row, l-r: Grace
Boyer, Edna Clark, Lena Smith, Mabel Smith, Edith Presley.)
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