Although women's intercollegiate basketball just celebrated its 50th season at UNT -- dating from 1976-77 after the passage of Title IX -- the sport did have less official beginnings.

Club teams existed on campus as early as 1906, but when "Miss Beulah" Harriss became North Texas' first women's coach and P.E. instructor in 1914, her women's basketball teams played intercollegiately and went undefeated for three seasons (1918-1920).

A common opponent was SMU, a team North Texas beat 15-8 on the road in 1918-19 -- even though, as the Yucca yearbook noted, "the Methodists had the advantage of playing on an indoor court." At North Texas, the games were played on dirt. The uniforms also were baggy for modesty's sake. Harriss later said the bloomers alone required six yards of material for each leg.

The 1921 Yucca called Harriss "perhaps the foremost coach of girls' athletics in this section of the country." However, in 1925, the Texas teachers' colleges banned intercollegiate athletics for women -- believing strenuous activity and competition to be detrimental to their health. Harriss then organized what became the Women's Recreation Association on campus, providing women with intramural and eventually extramural sports.

Harriss was not one to cut back on activity herself. She was the first woman to serve as an athletic administrator at North Texas, founder of Denton Girl Scouts, founder of the Green Jackets -- and a co-founder of the Denton County Teachers Federal Credit Union, now known as DATCU. Retiring in 1960, she was said to have taught more than 15,000 students over her 46-year career. She died in 1977, as women's basketball was on the rise again.

Find more photos in Miss Beulah's scrapbook on UNT's Digital Library.