A dramatic comeback: the history of sports at AHN

POSTMKTG is thrilled to have helped Academy of the Holy Names rediscover its proud history of athletics and put it on display.

A new 200-foot mural celebrates 110 years of milestones and nearly forgotten memories, including a fierce interscholastic rivalry with AHN in Rome, New York, held semi-annually from the 1930s through the 1950s, a period when national sports associations, even women-led sports associations, were warning against vigorous competition among girls.

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS BASKETBALL

Basketball was invented at Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, and by 1892 was already the rage at women’s colleges throughout the Northeast. Here was a sport girls could play (though at half court with slightly modified rules), even in gyms like that at 628 Madison Avenue, with its 11” ceilings and exposed water pipes! By 1912, with the founding of the A. A. A., the Amateur Athletic Association, basketball was played, hard, here, with a JV team and two Varsity teams.

By the 1930s , “Rome Day,’ the rivalry between AHN of Albany, New York, and AHN of Rome, New York, had become a tradition, and the seed of interscholastic competition was planted.

As early as 1965, at a time when interscholastic competition for girls was rare, AHN was competing (in basketball and field hockey) with other schools in the region, including Kenwood Convent of the Sacred Heart, Saint Catherine of Siena, and Notre Dame. Today, the school competes in 13 varsity sports.