Evolution of VolleyballAtleast once a week, 800 million people worldwide play volleyball.

As of 2017, it is considered the fifth most popular sport in the world. It has been a part of
many major sporting events, including the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games (beach
volleyball only), the European Games, the Asian Games, and the Youth Olympics. It’s
the favourite sport of many people across the world and has many clubs and leagues
dedicated to it. But how did it all begin? When and why was it created? Who invented
volleyball and how has it evolved over time?

In 1895, William G. Morgan, a gym teacher in Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented a game

that was a combination of four different sports: basketball, tennis, handball, and
baseball. Morgan was born on January 23, 1870 in Lockport, New York, and attended
Springfield College, where he befriended James Naismith, the inventor of basketball. He
then went on to teach physical education to young businessmen in the YMCA (Young
Men’s Christian Association.) However, he soon realized that basketball was too
aggressive a sport for them, so he decided to create something for them to play that
required less physical contact but was still played in teams. He borrowed a tennis net
and set it up 6 feet and 6 inches high and called his new sport “Mintonette” because of
its likeness to badminton.

Mintonette was slightly different from modern day volleyball. The court was 25 ft by 50 ft
and the game could be played with an unlimited amount of people. There were nine
innings in a game, and in each inning each of the two teams served three times. The
server had two tries to serve the ball and if the ball hit the net on the second attempt the
other team would get a point. The teams could touch the ball as many times as they
wanted before passing it to the other team.

The rules were modified over the next few months and on July 7th, 1896, the first official
game of volleyball was played at Springfield College. The name of the game was
changed when someone suggested to call it Volleyball (originally called Volley Ball)
since the ball was being volleyed back and forth across the net, and a ball was designed
specifically for the game in 1900 (before which a number of different balls were used and
were found unsuitable).

In the early 1900s, the YMCA began to spread the sport to other countries, such as
Canada, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. The set (passing the ball in a way that
enables another player to spike it over the net) and the spike (using the center of the
palm to hit the ball over the net) were introduced in the Philippines in 1916. Nowadays,
most volleyball teams have a setter.

Volleyball became a part of physical education class in schools and colleges in 1916,
when the YMCA asked the National Collegiate Athletic Association to help advertise and
publicise volleyball and to assist in improving the rules. Volleyball was also being
promoted in other ways. In 1919, the American Expeditionary Forces gave out 16 000
volleyballs to its forces and confederates.

In 1917, the game changed from being 21 points to 15 points, and three years later, in
1920, the rules were changed so that each side was only allowed to touch the ball three
times before passing it onto the other team, and the rules of the back row attack were
created.
The first YMCA national championships happened in 1922 in New York, and in 1928,
The United States Volleyball Association, now called USA Volleyball, was created and
was open to people who were not in the YMCA. The first beach volleyball game was
played in 1930, the forearm pass, more commonly known as the bump, was invented in
the late 1940s, the Federation Internationale De Volley-Ball, (FIVB), which is now the
biggest global sport organisation in the world, was established in Paris, France in 1947.
The FIVB has a crucial role to play in the expansion and success of volleyball. They host
numerous international contests, including the FIVB World Championships, the FIVB
World League, the FIVB World Grand Prix, the FIVB World Cup and the FIVB Grand
Champions Cup. They have been promoting volleyball for many decades.

The first beach volleyball tournament happened in 1948, and in 1949, the first volleyball
World Championships took place in Prague, Czechoslovakia. By 1951, 50 million people
in over 60 countries were playing volleyball, in 1955, volleyball became a part of the Pan
American Games and in 1957 volleyball became an official team sport in the Olympics
and was played in the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Volleyball continued to evolve. In 1965, the California Beach Volleyball Association was
inaugurated, in 1983 the Association of Volleyball Professionals was established, the
Women’s Professional Volleyball Association was started in 1986, and the World
League was developed in 1990. 1995 marked the 100 year anniversary of volleyball, and
a year after that, beach volleyball was included in the Olympic Games for the first time in
the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Volleyball has influenced the lives of many different people. It is a competitive sport
played in teams that takes the elements of tennis, basketball, handball, and baseball and
makes it a fun and different game that can be played by people who are looking for a
challenge but do not want something too strenuous, like basketball. It allows people to
collaborate and share their skills and have fun without getting too exhausted, through a
sport that is not too vigorous. Volleyball has changed throughout the years, as it spread
from coast to coast, becoming one of the most popular sports in the world.