There were seven different events that took place: an amateur championship, a college championship, a YMCA championship, two high school championships, and two elementary school championships.[1]
Men's amateur championships
The Buffalo German YMCA dominated the men's championship while other teams frequently failed to field a complete team or show up for all their scheduled games, resulting in several lopsided scores and forfeited matches.[2]
The Fort Shaw Indian School Girls Basketball Team faced off against the Missouri All-Stars, alumnae of Central High in St. Louis.[5] Fort Shaw won the first game 24-2. The St. Louis team failed to show up for the second game and forfeited. However, the team asked to continue the competition and Fort Shaw agreed. At the end of the second game the score stood 17 to 6, winning the Fort Shaw girls the title as the basketball champions of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.[6][5] On August 25 the girls won the silver and gold cup for women's basketball at the fair. Despite being signed up to play only in the women's basketball bracket, the team won in the general competition, something which was conveniently omitted from Spalding's Athletic Almanac.[7] The Fort Shaw team story is told in a book entitled Full Court Quest.[8]
↑ Written at St. Louis. "Hurrah for Hiram — Little Ohio College Wins Basket-ball Championship of the World at St. Louis". The Kalamazoo Gazette. Kalamazoo, MI. Associated Press. July 14, 1904. The Hiram college basket-ball team won the college championship basket-ball contest open to the colleges of the world, today.
↑ Written at St. Louis. "Hiram Gets the Banner — Basket Ball Team Wins the World's Intercollegiate Championship — Members Are Awarded Gold Medals". Cleveland, Ohio. July 14, 1904. The intercollegiate basket ball championship games were played in World's Fair gymnasium to-day, the world's championship banner going to Hiram College, of Hiram, O. Wheaton College, of Wheaton, Ill., was second, and the Latter Day Saints' College, of Salt Lake City, Utah, third.
12Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula (2008). ""Leav[ing] the White[s] ... Far Behind Them": The Girls from Fort Shaw (Montana) Indian School, Basketball Champions of the 1904 World's Fair". In Brownell, Susan (ed.). The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race, and American Imperialism. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN9780803210981.
↑Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula (2001). "World champions: The 1904 girls' basketball team from Fort Shaw Indian boarding school". The Magazine of Western History. 51 (4): 2–25. ProQuest217952861.
↑Parezo, Nancy J. "A "Special Olympics": Testing Racial Strength and Endurance at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition". In Brownell, Susan (ed.). The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games.
↑Peavy, Linda S.; Smith, Ursula (2014). Full Court Quest. OUP. ISBN9780806144696.
