Happy Birthday, Volleyball!
On February 9, our favorite game celebrates its 131st anniversary!
On February 9, 1895, William Morgan (1870–1942),director of physical education at the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association),invented a new team ball game in a gymnasium belonging to the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA.
Morgan decided to combine elements of basketball, baseball and handball. He borrowed the net from tennis and set it approximately 196 cm above the floor, so that it was higher than the head of a person of average height at the time. The aim of the game was to send the ball over the net. Initially, there was no limit on the number of participants. The game itself was named “Mintonette.”
Just one year after its invention, in 1896, “Mintonette” was presented to the public at a conference of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. This association later became an active driving force behind the spread of volleyball.
Since the main idea of the game was to strike the ball with the hands and make it fly over the net, Professor Alfred Halstead suggested renaming “Mintonette” to “volleyball.” The English term “volley ball” refers to a flying ball and comes from “at the volley” and “ball.”
In 1900, volleyball spread beyond the United States and began to rapidly gain popularity in other countries around the world.
As the game developed, its rules, techniques and tactics were continually refined. The basic rules, some of which remain in place today, took shape between 1915 and 1925: from 1917, sets were limited to 15 points and the net height was set at 243 cm; in 1918, the number of players on the court was fixed at six; from 1922, no more than three touches of the ball were allowed; and in 1925, the modern court dimensions and the size and weight of the volleyball were established. These rules were used in the Americas, Africa and Europe, while in Asia, until the early 1960s, the game was played according to its own rules, with nine or twelve players on an 11 × 22 m court and no player rotation during a match.
In a short period of time, the game became a popular pastime for a wide range of people and later developed into a modern and popular sport.
Today, volleyball is an Olympic sport and one of the most widely played sports in the world.
Happy birthday to our beloved game!
