History of volleyball Article about History of volleyball

History of volleyball Article about History of volleyball

Volleyball, game played by two teams, usually of six players on a side, in which the players use their hands to bat a ball back and forth over a high net, trying to make the ball touch the court within the opponents’ playing area before it can be returned. To prevent this a player on the opposing team bats the ball up and toward a teammate before it touches the court surface — that teammate may then volley it back across the net or bat it to a third teammate who volleys it across the net. A team is allowed only three touches of the ball before it must be returned over the net.
Volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, physical director of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It was designed as an indoor sport for businessmen who found the new game of basketball too vigorous. Morgan called the sport “mintonette,” until a professor from Springfield College in Massachusetts noted the volleying nature of play and proposed the name of “volleyball.” The original rules were written by Morgan and printed in the first edition of the Official Handbook of the Athletic League of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of North America (1897). The game soon proved to have wide appeal for both sexes in schools, playgrounds, the armed forces, and other organizations in the United States, and it was subsequently introduced to other countries.
In 1916 rules were issued jointly by the YMCA and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The first nationwide tournament in the United States was conducted by the National YMCA Physical Education Committee in New York City in 1922. The United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) was formed in 1928 and recognized as the rules-making, governing body in the United States. From 1928 the USVBA now known as USA Volleyball (USAV) has conducted annual national men’s and senior men’s (age 35 and older) volleyball championships, except during 1944 and 1945. Its women’s division was started in 1949, and a senior women’s division (age 30 and older) was added in 1977. Other national events in the United States are conducted by member groups of the USAV such as the YMCA and the NCAA.
Volleyball was introduced into Europe by American troops during World War I, when national organizations were formed. The Fédération Internationale de Volley Ball (FIVB) was organized in Paris in 1947 and moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1984. The USVBA was one of the 13 charter members of the FIVB, whose membership grew to more than 210 member countries by the late 20th century.
International volleyball competition began in 1913 with the first Far East Games, in Manila. During the early 1900s and continuing until after World War II, volleyball in Asia was played on a larger court, with a lower net, and nine players on a team.
The FIVB-sponsored world volleyball championships (for men only in 1949; for both men and women in 1952 and succeeding years) led to acceptance of standardized playing rules and officiating. Volleyball became an Olympic sport for both men and women at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
European championships were long dominated by Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Soviet (later, Russian) teams. At the world and Olympic level, Soviet teams have won more titles, both men’s and women’s, than those of any other nation. Their success was attributed to widespread grassroots interest and well-organized play and instruction at all levels of skill. A highly publicized Japanese women’s team, Olympic champions in 1964, reflected the interest of private industry in sport. Young women working for the sponsoring company devoted their free time to conditioning, team practice, and competition under expert and demanding coaching. Encouraged by the Japanese Volleyball Association, this women’s team made its mark in international competition, winning the World Championship in 1962, 1966, and 1967, in addition to the 1964 Olympics. At the end of the 20th century, however, the Cuban women’s team dominated both the World Championships and the Olympics.
The Pan American Games (involving South, Central, and North America) added volleyball in 1955, and Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and the United States are frequent contenders for top honours. In Asia, China, Japan, and Korea dominate competition. Volleyball, especially beach volleyball, is played in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the South Pacific.

A four-year cycle of international volleyball events, recommended by the FIVB, began in 1969 with World Cup championships, to be held in the year following the Olympic Games; the second year is the World Championships; in the third the regional events are held (e.g., European championships, Asian Games, African Games, Pan American Games); and in the fourth year the Olympic Games.
usually played, as its name implies, on a sand court with two players per team was introduced in California in 1930. The first official beach volleyball tournament was held in 1948 at Will Rogers State Beach, in Santa Monica, California, and the first FIVB-sanctioned world championship was held in 1986 at Rio de Janeiro. Beach volleyball was added to the roster of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.
In volleyball history, volleyball is recognized as a truly international, widely played, popular sport.
Volleyball originated in the United States in 1895 as a blend of basketball, baseball, tennis, and handball.
Today, volleyball has spread to 211 countries around the world.

In 1895, William G. Morgan, an instructor at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Holyoke, Mass.
Morgan created the game of volleyball, at that time called mintonette.
In 1896, the first official game of Volleyball was played at Springfield College.
In the year 1900, Volleyball was popular enough that a new ball was customized for the sport.
Volleyball is actually the 5th most popular sport, and the second most popular team sport in the world, with over 900 Million fans around the globe. It’s also a fairly recent sport, developed at Springfield Massachusetts in 1895 by YMCA instructor William G. Morgan. The sport, originally named ‘mintonette’, borrowed ideas from a number of sports including basketball, tennis, handball and baseball. The following year, professor Alfred Halstead proposed changing the name to ‘volleyball’ after observing the volleying nature of the game. The sport became very popular, very quickly, being played by both men and women around the country at various colleges, playgrounds and even throughout the armed forces.
Initially a basketball was used in the game however players found it a little too heavy. Morgan contacted A.G. Spalding, a local sporting goods manufacturer for help. Spalding designed a special lighter ball with a leather shell. The ball was around 25” in circumference and far easier to keep airborne. Modern volleyball designs have not changed significantly since the introduction of this first design.
Just 10 years later, the game was already being played in several other countries. Canada begun playing in 1900, the Caribbean in 1906 and by 1908 the game had spread as far as Japan. During World War 1, the US soldiers would play volleyball in their downtime and it quickly started catching on in Europe.
Beach volleyball first made an appearance in 1915 on the sands of Waikiki Beach in Hawaii, where games at the Outrigger Canoe Club represented the birth of the sport. The idea of volleyball on the beach quickly caught on, with the first permanent nets appearing in Santa Monica, California in 1920. Beach volleyball grew in popularity across the United States during the Great Depression and through the 1940s and 50s.
Worldwide popularity for both versions of the sport soared with Volleyball being officially added to the list of Olympic sports in 1964, and beach volleyball being included in 1996. It is now a global sport with international competitions organized by the FIVB, of the International Volleyball Federation being established a the international governing body for all forms of volleyball.
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This international signified the start of the Volleyball era.
In 1907, Volleyball was presented at the Playground of America convention as one of the most popular sports. This was the first credit the sport received, and helped to further the sport recognition.

Over the next five years volleyball spread to Central American countries.

In 1913, volleyball was held in the Far Eastern Games. This was the first official volleyball competition.

In 1916, volleyball had arrived in YMCA Brazil and South America. The set and spike was first executed in the Philippines. This offensive system altered how the game was played. For the first time the ball was set in a high trajectory and then spiked by a teammate. The Filipinos created the kill, known in United States as bomba. The bomba was named after the attacker called the bomberino.

Rules and Tournaments
Rules and tournaments came about as a result of the formation of the United States Volleyball Association USVBA. The first U.S. Open was staged, as the field was open to non-YMCA squads. The United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) was formed in 1928 and recognized as the rules-making, governing body in the United States.

Volleyball at the YMCA

Since 1928, the USVBA, now known as USA Volleyball (USAV), has put on national men’s and senior men’s (age 35 and older) volleyball championships every year except during 1944 and 1945.

Beach Volleyball

Women’s USVBA divisions started in 1949 and have been growing ever since.

In the late 1940s, some European national federations began discussing the need for creating an international governing body for the sport of volleyball.

The FIVB was founded in Paris, France in 1947. Initial discussions eventually lead to the installation of a Constitutive Congress in 1947. Fourteen national federations representing five different continents attended meetings where the organization was officially formed.

One of the main goals of the 1947 Congress was achieved two years later with the establishment of the first international major volleyball event, the World Championship.

In 1952, a women played in FIVB tournaments for the first time in volleyball history.
Morgan, who was born in New York, is known as the inventor of volleyball which he originally named Mintonette.

Later, Alfred Halstead re-named Mintonette volleyball because the object of the game was to volley a ball back and forth over a net.

Morgan studied at the Springfield College of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) where he met James Naismith.

Naismith, in 1891, had recently invented the game of basketball. During the summer of 1895, Morgan moved to the YMCA at Holyoke where he became Director of Physical Education.
In this role, Morgan had the opportunity to direct a vast program of exercises and sport classes for male adults. His leadership was eagerly accepted, and his classes grew in large numbers. He came to realize he needed a different type of competitive recreational game in order to vary his physical fitness program.

Basketball, which sport was beginning to develop, seemed to suit young people, but it was necessary to find a less violent and less intense alternative for the older members.

Morgan took some of the characteristics from tennis and handball along with basketball. Morgan liked the game of tennis, but tennis required rackets, balls, a net.

He didn’t like all the equipment, but he did like the idea of a net.
Morgan invented volleyball, which was originally called Mintonette. Mintonette was designed to be an indoor sport. Mintonette was less rough than basketball for older members of the YMCA, while still requiring some athletic ability.

The first rules required for a net to be 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 meters) high, a 25 × 50 foot (7.6 × 15.2 meter) court. Each team could have as many players as a team wanted.

A match was nine innings with three serves for each team in each inning. There was no limit to the number of ball contacts for each team before sending the ball to the other side of the court.

In case of a miss serve, a second try was allowed. Hitting the ball into the net was a fault, with loss of the point or a side-out, except in the case of a first serve attempt.
You might think that volleyball has only been around for 40 or 50 years. You’d be wrong — the history of volleyball actually stretches all the way back to the 19th century, and the sport has come a long way in the 120 years in between. We’re going to look at all the facts and answer the main questions about how this sport came to be in this brief history of volleyball.

History of indoor volleyball
To find out when and how volleyball was invented, we need to go all the way back to 1895, at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) school in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA. There, we can answer who invented volleyball — the physical education director, William G. Morgan, wanted to come up with an indoor sport that was less physical than basketball but still required a good level of fitness. It was in that very establishment that he wrote down the first rules for a game he called mintonette.

For, the structure of the game, Morgan took the ball from basketball, the idea of a net from tennis, and the use of the hands from handball to make a true hybrid sport. Volleyball had been born, but it wasn’t until a year later when the sport was presented at the Physical Director’s Conference in Springfield, Massachusetts, that Dr Alfred Halstead gave it the name we know today.

Development of volleyball rules
Of course, the original volleyball rules were quite different to the modern sport. The court was a lot smaller, but there were no limits to numbers of players or the number of times the ball could be hit up in the air. The early game consisted of 9 innings, with 3 serves per inning and the sport remained unchanged for a few years until, in 1900, volleyball’s famous inventor himself commissioned a lighter ball — the same ball that is used today.

Volleyball developed slowly over the following twenty years, with the 15-point system being introduced in 1917 and a 3-hit limit following in 1920. 1922 saw the first YMCA national championships and six years later, the first US Open was held under the jurisdiction of new governing body the United States Volleyball Association — now USA Volleyball.

Continued growth of volleyball
The sport continued to grow in America, but it was also being played abroad; the set and spike was invented in the Philippines, for example. In fact, even though we know that volleyball was invented in the US, the first World Championships in 1949 was dominated by the European nations — Czechoslovakia were the winners. In fact, the US have only won the men’s World Championships once — in 1986 — although they did win the Volleyball World Cup in 2015 and the women’s World Championships in 2014.

Today, 220 nations are registered with the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), which has been the international governing body since 1947. It is one of the most played team sports worldwide and has been an Olympic sport since 1964. But the sport has also spawned a successful spin-off; Beach Volleyball.

History of beach volleyball
Unlike its predecessor, the history of beach volleyball isn’t quite as certain. General consensus says that it was likely played in Hawaii first, on Waikiki Beach in 1915. However, there are those that point to the 1920s, in Santa Monica, as being the true birthplace of the sport as we now know it, played by two people per team. Indeed, Paul Johnson of the Santa Monica club hit on the 2 v 2 format while waiting for other players to turn up for a game in 1930 — it had previously been played as a six-a-side game.

Beach volleyball quickly became popular as a family-friendly sport that could be played on holiday, and it spread around coastal areas worldwide. It was particularly popular in the States though, as it was a cheap way for people to enjoy themselves during the financially difficult times of The Great Depression.

Competitive beach volleyball
By the 1940s, beach volleyball was being played competitively and it grew through the 50s and 60s, as superstars such as The Beatles got involved in high profile events. It wasn’t until 1976 that the game went pro though, at The Olympia World Championship in California.

It didn’t take long for the FIVB to get hold of it after that, and Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro hosted the first sanctioned tournament in 1987, and the world series followed in 1989. Now, the Beach Volleyball World Tour features nearly 50 international tournaments, with the total amount of prize money per year in the millions.

Beach volleyball in the Olympics
Beach volleyball followed volleyball in becoming an Olympic sport in 1996. In these events, and the world championships, Brazil are by far the dominant nation, winning 12 golds combined, compared with the United States’ 5. Despite ongoing financial issues, particularly in America during the 2000s, it still remains an extremely popular sport and is watched by some of the largest television audiences at the Olympics.

Both volleyball and beach volleyball are now major sports, played by professional athletes. But its popularity endures through being easy to learn and play regardless of fitness or mobility levels. And with many schools across Europe and around the world having volleyball as the main team sport on their curricula, the sport has a bright future. Not bad for an off-the-cuff idea from 1895.