Tennis Popular at Seminary
This snapshot from the photo album of Seminary student Lucretia Nicholson shows unidentified students at the Acadia Ladies Seminary posed on the tennis courts at the side of the Seminary about 1907. The Seminary is in the background. During this period, the girls of the Sem played tennis, skated, and played hockey and basketball. When they played tennis, the girls wore long white skirts and long white blouses, or shirtwaists. Their rackets were made of wood and much heavier than those used by players today. It took strength to lift and swing the racket and agility to move rapidly in the long skirts that were required wear for women tennis players in 1907. It is not known if these women played tennis or if they played competitively, but women in Wolfville did play competitively during this period. By the 1920s, a number of Wolfville women regularly played in, and won, provincial and regional tennis competitions.
Photographer unknown. [1907] Esther Clark Wright Archives, Acadia University. Lucretia Florence Nicholson fonds, 1900.198.
