womenSports magazine was the first magazine dedicated to women in sports. It was launched in close conjunction with Billie Jean King's Women's Sports Foundation

Women's Sports Foundation

The Women's Sports Foundation "is an educational nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King." Its stated mission statement is "To advance the lives of girls and women through sports and physical activity."...

 and each issue of the magazine contained a two-page article written by the executive director of the Foundation.

womenSports

Billie Jean and Larry King acted as publishers, while Jim Jorgensen was the company president. Rosalie Wright from Philadelphia

Philadelphia (magazine)

Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....

magazine was hired as the magazine's editor-in-chief and brought on writers Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is a novelist and non-fiction writer. She is also a political activist, public speaker and writing teacher. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical...

, Jon Carroll

Jon Carroll

Jon Carroll is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning in 1982, at that time succeeding Charles McCabe's column. He is featured on the back page of the Datebook on weekdays. Locally, he is best known for his moderate-to-liberal politics and his cat columns.Carroll was born in Los...

 and Greg Hoffman. During its design and launch phase, womenSports received help from Ms. Magazine

Ms. magazine

Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...

publishers Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...

 as well as celebrity PR executive Pat Kingsley.

The inaugural issue of womenSports in May 1974 featured Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King

Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society...

 on the cover. Shortly after launch, womenSports reached a monthly circulation of 200,000. womenSports won a J.C. Penney-Missouri Award in 1974. (The J.C. Penney-Missouri Awards became the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards in 1994.)

Turnover began in 1975 when editor Wright was fired and replaced by Cheryl McCall from the Detroit Free Press

Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...

. womenSports was sold to the Charter Company, then owner of Redbook

Redbook

Redbook is an American women's magazine published by the Hearst Corporation. It is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.-History:...

, in 1976 and the company’s offices were moved to New York from San Francisco. Then-editor McCall stayed with the magazine, but soon left to become an editor at People

People (magazine)

In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

magazine. Cutler Durkee moved with the magazine to New York, then from womenSports to People where he became its executive editor.

Women's Sports and Fitness

After Charter ceased publication of womenSports, the Kings reclaimed ownership of the magazine and began publishing it through the Women's Sports Foundation as Women's Sports , publishing it monthly from 1979 through 1984. In 1984 the magazine moved to bimonthly publication and subsequently changed its name to Women's Sports and Fitness .

Condé Nast Women's Sports and Fitness

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

acquired Women's Sports + Fitness in 1998 and rolled its monthly Condé Nast Sports for Women into it to form bimonthly magazine titled Condé Nast Women's Sports and Fitness . The magazine continued under that tile through 2000, when Condé Nast closed the magazine.