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Naismith played center on both the 1890 and 1891 Springfield College football teams, also known as the Stubby Christians. Amos Alonzo Stagg, the “Grand Old Man of Football,” started the football program and was the coach and star of the team.

The 1925 Jayhawker yearbook was dedicated to Dr. Naismith. The dedication reads “To Dr. James A. Naismith, twenty-six years at the University as director of Physical Education, Father of Basketball, exponent of clean sportsmanship, believer in the…

After graduating from the Springfield College in 1891, Naismith becomes a faculty member at college where he remained through the spring of 1895. Not listed here is the required physical training class that the students had to take, for whom, in late…

Original page from the January 15, 1892
“Triangle” magazine in which the game of basketball is introduced.

10. The gymnasium where basketball was first played at the School for Christian Workers building

The School for Christian Workers building or the original Springfield College School building, located at the corner of State and Sherman streets in Springfield, Massachusetts, where Naismith invented the game of Basketball. Today a McDonald’s…

During the early years of Basketball at Springfield College, interschool leagues were formed. The teams gave themselves colorful names, such as flappers, cowboys, otters, or, as is shown in this postcard, farmers and mermaids.

Luther Halsey Gulick is often referred to as the father of physical education and recreation in the United States. The founder and first director of the Springfield College physical department, it was Gulick who directed Naismith to create a winter…

Dr. Luther Gulick, the founder and first director of the physical department at Springfield College, is in the center holding calipers. Gulick’s philosophy of training the whole man, in body, mind and spirit, was one of the reasons that Naismith…