New Jersey Girls
Location: Orange, New Jersey
Captain: Brookey Goode
Home Court: Douglass Auditorium
Established: 1910
The New Jersey Girls were an African American women’s basketball team formed in Orange, New Jersey in 1910.
Nicknamed the Jersey Girls and using the Douglass Auditorium in Orange as their home court, their roster included team captain and right forward Brookey Goode, or “B. Goode,” as she was known.
They made history on February 26, 1910, as one of the squads in the first recorded basketball game ever played between two independently organized all-Black women’s teams, competing against the New York Girls.
Though they lost 12-3, in a “clever and even scientific game,” the Jersey Girls reportedly “were more familiar with the baskets.”
The New York Age said both teams played “fast and vigorously, as several hard falls on the floor attested.”
At first, the Jersey Girls were described as “winsome and charming in their dainty white blouses,” while one so-called expert, a male physician, declared in 1911 that “basket ball is injurious and should not be engaged in by girls or women.”
He said, “the nature of women should keep them from this dangerous sport.”
Gradually though, through national coverage in African American newspapers, the blouses, bows, and bloomers worn by the Jersey Girls gave way to form-fitting athletically functional uniforms, helping to change the narrative about overall female participation in sports.
