How Did It Start: The History of Volleyball

The sport of Volleyball was originally started in 1895 when William G. Morgan, an instructor at the Young Men's Christian Association in Holyoke, Massachusetts, wanted to take elements from popular sports such as basketball, baseball, tennis, and handball to create a new kind of sport for different classes of businessmen that would be less physically demanding than the game of basketball. The result was volleyball, which he originally called Mintonette. Morgan took the kind of net used in tennis and raised it to 6 feet 6 inches above the court, which was just above the average men's height at the time. The naming for volleyball came when, during a demonstration game of the new sport, an observer remarked about the back and forth volleying action of the play.

Volleyball then continued to advance. On July 7th, 1896, the first game of volleyball was played at Springfield college. Later, in 1900, a special ball designed specifically for volleyball was designed, and the YMCA continued expansion of the game outside the United States into Canada, Asia, and the Southern Hemisphere. The sport was able to reach communist Cuba in 1905, and in 1907 the sport was presented to the playground convention and was touted as being the most popular sport there. In 1913, Volleyball was held at the Far Eastern games, which was a large sporting festival of the time. A major step that volleyball took came when in 1919 American expeditionary forces were able to successfully distribute sixteen thousand volleyballs to its troops and allies. This action had the far reaching consequence of spreading the game of volleyball and growing it in foreign countries.
Volleyball continued growing until in 1957, the international Olympic committee designated Volleyball as an Olympic sport. This marked a major recognition and turning point for the growth of the game itself. The first Olympic Games that contained Volleyball were the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Olympic competition fostered the creation of many different levels of competition, ranging from youth sports to high school to college and even professionally. There are millions of children playing volleyball every year and it is a popular sport particularly among young women. There are many different types of materials that are needed to play volleyball, from the ball itself, to shoes, to uniforms. There are specialty kinds of every type of uniform, especially volleyball spandex, which can be purchased from many retailers, particularly online retailers, which offer consumer friendly prices.

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