Timeline of women's sports in the United States Lyle Alberga, was the first of three women to play Negro league baseball, and thus the first woman to play as a regular on an American big-league professional baseball team. 1954 - The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League played its last season. 1955 - The first LPGA championship was held. 1959 - Arlene Pieper became the first woman to officially finish a marathon in the United States when she finished the Pikes Peak Marathon. 1960 - Mary McGee earns a FIM license and becomes the first official female motorcycle racer in the United States. 1961 - The WIBC Queens all-female
Professional sports leagues in the United States in North America. Founded in 1996 and beginning play in the 1997 season, it is the longest-running American professional women's sport league in history. The league's attendance has fluctuated over the last several seasons. It had an average per-game attendance of 8,039 in 2009 and 7,834 in 2010. Total attendance was 1,598,160 in 2010. In 2007, the league signed a television deal with ESPN that would run from 2009 to 2016. This deal is the first to ever pay rights fees to women's teams. In 2009 it had a total television viewership of 413,000 in combined cable and broadcast television.