Field Hockey 2:
In the United States
Bandy and/or shinty (the terms were pretty much interchangeable) were brought to North America from the British Isles, but they didn't take root, although they may have had something to do with the development of ice hockey in Canada. The few references are from the late 18th and early 19th century. Major General John Sullivan watched his officers (including the chaplain) play shinty during a 1779 expedition in New York. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a 1795 graduate of Dickinson College, recalled playing bandy as a student. And Princeton College in 1787 prohibited bandy as being "low and unbecoming gentleman and scholars."
Bandy does seem to have remained fairly popular through the first half of the 19th century in North Carolina, which had a sizeable Scottish-American population. W. A. Chaffin, a schoolteacher in North Carolina in 1848, prescribed a punishment of ten lashes for playing bandy (but only eight lashes for "Drinking Spirituous Liquors at School"!) "Bandy, or Shinny," was called the "favorite game of the students" at the University of North Carolina in 1834, when it was by denounced as the college president as being dangerous, especially since the students used a ball made of hard wood.
About the same time, it was also being played at Trinity College in North Carolina (now Duke University). One Trinity student wrote, "sticks fly, and hands are hurt, and limbs are bruised, and heads are struck, and still the excited, panting players rush after the ball to gain the victory."
After the Civil War, bandy lingered only as a sport for younger boys. The rules were explained in The American Boy's Book of Sports and Games, published in 1864. Typically, that book also referred to the game as shinny.
Evidently, some male college students tried field hockey late in the 19th century, decided it was too rough, and abandoned the sport. Ironically, that left the way open for field hockey to become known as a women's sport in North America.
Canadian women were playing field hockey in British Columbia in 1896, but the sport's real arrival was in 1901, when Constance M. K. Applebee of the British College of Physical Education was taking a summer course at Harvard. She was surprised to find that field hockey was unknown among American physical educators. "An English woman cannot be judged athletically until she performs in field hockey," she declared. Then, using ice hockey sticks and a softball, she demonstrated the sport.
Harriet Ballintine, director of athletics at Vassar College, was among those who saw the demonstration. She immediately hired Applebee to teach field hockey at Vassar. Before the year ended, the American Field Hockey Association (AFHA) had been founded, with Applebee as president. Other women's schools and public colleges in the East quickly adopted the sport. The first non-collegiate field hockey league was organized in Philadelphia in 1907.
Applebee in 1904 went to Vassar to Bryn Mawr, where she served as director of outdoor sports for 25 years. She also founded a field hockey camp in Mt. Pocono, Pennsylvania, and became editor and publisher of Sportswoman, the first magazine aimed specifically at women athletes. In 1920, Applebee brought a team of 15 all-stars from the Philadelphia to Great Britain. They managed to win two of 10 games against English teams.
The main purpose of the AFHA had been to publish standardized field hockey rules. In 1921, a group of women met in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to plan a true national governing body. As a result of their work, the U. S. Field Hockey Association was founded in January of 1922 by representatives from 15 states, meeting in Philadelphia.
In the meantime, women had begun playing field hockey in a number of other countries outside of England. The International Federation of Women's Hockey Associations (IFWHA) was founded in 1927 by representatives from Australia, Denmark, England, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, the United States and Wales. Within a few years, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Switzerland had also joined the IFWHA.