In 1892, after Berenson realized that the gymnastic exercises were not as popular as she had originally thought, she looked for alternatives. She read about the new game of basketball, invented by James Naismith, in the YMCA publication "Physical Education". Group games were "unheard of" at Smith, but she felt this would be an interesting experiment. Other attempts at teaching games had not succeeded, in part because the women of that time had no experience with team play. Initial games were played in class in the spring of 1892. The exact date of the first informal game is not known, but one student wrote to her mother on March 6, 1892, describing a new game they were playing, in which the object was to put a ball into your opponent's basket, as "great fun". Instead of the peach baskets used in the first men's game, the goals in the first women's game were fashioned from waste baskets.