| The
history of volleyball is closely linked to
that of another popular court game. In fact,
just eight miles and four years separate the
historic development of volleyball and its
cousin basketball.
A
Game for the (Middle) Ages
In 1895, William G. Morgan was the education
director as the Holyoke, Massachusetts,
YMCA. Four years earlier, his colleague
James Naismith had invented the game of
basketball just down the road at the Springfield
YMCA. Naismith’s game was catching
on quickly but there was a drawback. Not
everyone could keep up with the fast pace
of basketball—and that was even before
the fast break was created. Morgan needed
a game that could be enjoyed by middle-aged
men.
Morgan conceived a court
game he originally called mintonette. He
chose the name because his new sport was
related to badminton. Mintonette was played
on a court divided by a six-foot, six-inch
net. Teams volleyed the ball back and forth
across the net until one team missed. The
first competitive game of volleyball was
played July 7, 1896.
Things They Are
a Changing…Quickly
Changes were immediately made to Morgan’s
game. One of the first changes was the name
itself. Alfred Halstead is credited with
renaming the sport with the descriptive
words “volley ball.” (Can you
imagine Karch Kiraly playing for a gold
medal in Olympic beach mintonette?) The
number of players on each team also was
limited. Originally, a team was allowed
to have as many players as it could fit
into its half of a 50- by 25-foot court.
The number of players was set at nine per
side and later reduced to six. Rotating
players to various positions on the court
has been part of the game from the beginning.
The number of times a team
could touch the ball before it went over
the net was eventually established at three.
The first rules allowed an unlimited number
of hits. The earliest games in Morgan’s
gym were played with the rubber bladder
from inside a basketball. Spalding made
the first official volleyball in 1896. By
1900, the standard shape and weight of the
ball were almost identical to those used
today.
The height of the net was
raised to make play more challenging. Today,
the net is just under eight feet for men’s
competition (2.43 meters) and just over
seven feet (2.24 meters) for women’s.
Under the original rules of volleyball,
a team had to score 21 points to win a game.
In 1917, that number was reduced to 15.
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