Celebrating 100 years of Basketball in Lithuania

The year 2000 is the year marking the centenary of basketball in Lithuania. The first basketball competition in Lithuania and the beginning of the national basketball in general is considered to be the match between the Lithuanian Union of Physical Education (LUPT) and the team of the Provisional Capital (Kaunas) on 23 April 1922, and won by the LUPT at a score 8:6. What is more, Lithuania is closely associated with an even earlier period in the history of basketball. Basketball was invented in the late 19th century by an American physical educator, physician, James Naismith, and was soon adapted to be played by women. On 22 March 1893 in the US, the first game of women’s basketball was played between the first- and second-year students at the Smith College in Boston. The game was organised and its rules were adapted to suit women by Senda Valvrojenski Berenson Abbott, who was born in Butrimonys, Alytus region, and retreated to the USA with her family when still a child. Senda Berenson Abbott’s elder brother, Bernard Berenson, is one of the most famous art historians of all time.

This story illustrates that Lithuanian basketball played an important role in the development of the type of sport, throughout its existence. Lithuanian players contributed to the laying the foundations for a national success on the basketball court in several countries. In Lithuania basketball was always an important part of culture, a specific social phenomena and part of politics. Right before the World War II, Lithuanian basketball men teams became European champions twice (1937 and 1939), in 1938, the Lithuanian women’s basketball teams were second in the continent. In the displaced persons’ camps for World War II refugees basketball was a way of retaining the memories of the homeland, Lithuania. Valdas Adamkus, who later became the second President of Lithuania when its Independence was reinstated was also staying in one of those camps.