Oak Park was Sacramento’s first suburb, sub-divided and developed in 1887—by the 1910s it was connected directly to Downtown Sacramento by multiple streetcars and attracted the California State Fairgrounds. It became a destination neighborhood by boasting “no city taxes” and had a thriving social scene at the titular park on 8th and Sacramento Boulevard. In 1913, according to Sacramento Union archives, the city appointed a young Miss Doris Clark to become its Student Assistant of Parks, at a pay rate of $510 a year.

Scouring the online archives of the Sacramento Union, a defunct local newspaper, shows as many posts about her social activities as it has regarding her successes on the pitch. For the first few years as a Parks Assistant, she oversaw archery events, hiking, track and field, as well as helping to set up popular outdoor music events in Oak Park. Miss Doris Clark even participated in these events from time to time as a member of a quartet. It seems that by late 1915 or early 1916 she had earned herself a promotion and moved north three miles to McKinley Park on the corner of Alhambra and McKinley Boulevards.

*The Gateway to the Oak Park neighborhood near Sacramento, California*

It was here, at McKinley Park that she really took off and by all accounts, she was very well regarded; even her vacations to Yosemite in 1916 and to Lake Tahoe in 1917, would eventually be newsworthy. However, it was her continued efforts in her local park position that earned her the most attention. Even Spalding’s 1919-20 edition noted her efforts in a piece titled Women Taking Up the Kicking Game, “Soccer Football is about the most strenuous of athletic games. Its forty-five-minute halves are marked by practically continuous action in which every member of each team is on his toes, but that doesn’t seem to keep the girls out. In Sacramento, California, Miss Doris Clark is the manager, and a very successful one, of the McKinley Park Football Club. The only lady manager of a club affiliated with the United States Football Association.”

In their book, Women’s Soccer: The Passionate Game, Barbara Stewart and Helen Stoumbos tell us that “Women were on the periphery of soccer from the beginning. In part, because public schools were for men only, but as well, polite society at the time frowned on women who engaged in strenuous exercise. Doctors believed such activity could injure the reproductive system or simply make women too manly to have children.” From the sources available, there’s no evidence to point to Doris Clark having experience on the pitch but once she moved from Oak Park to McKinley Park, she took up the role of managing the competitive soccer team associated with that neighborhood. Stewart and Stoumbos go on to tell us, “At any time when women’s team sports such as baseball and hockey were being played across America, women’s soccer made inroads. Women were being accepted as part of the game, and several colleges picked it up as a regular sport. In 1920, a woman named Doris Clark became manager of the McKinley Park Football Club in Sacramento. She was the first woman to hold such a position with a sanctioned team.”

*Excerpt from Spalding’s Soccer Football Guide, 1919-1920*

From 1916 to 1919, Doris continued to organize seasonal and social events at McKinley Park, and she also managed the young men’s soccer team there. They dominated teams called Acorns, Grass Valley and Rovers—they even travelled to San Francisco to compete in the state cup. One Sacramento Union article from December 19, 1918 tells us, “Despite adverse conditions of weather and facing influenza, soccer is in full swing with spirited contests each Sunday… On Christmas day, the McKinley team will clash with Grass Valley… Miss Doris Clark, who has the local club in charge, expects her boys to win, although, she says the Grass Valley boys can play some football.”

While there are several notes and articles to share from the Sacramento Union’s archives regarding Miss Clark, it’s important to note that Stewart and Stoumbos’ assertion Clark took up the position in 1920 is incorrect—she resigned in 1919 after six years working between Oak and McKinley Parks. There’s no reason given, but the last piece I can find speaking to Doris’ activities says she “has tended her resignation to superintendent George Kim, to take effect July 20 (1919). Miss Clark has been very active in her work and was manager of the winning soccer team there last season. Before going to McKinley Park she served at Oak Park Playground.” Judging from her vacations spent in the outdoors and her success at throwing events at the parks, I can only venture to guess that she moved on to a similar parks position somewhere else; perhaps someday we’ll find an ending more befitting the first USSF sanctioned woman manager.

- Joshua Duder