The History of Volleyball

by Jena Gallagher, Sophomore

Winter 2017

“A game for two teams, usually of six players, in which a large ball is hit by hand over a high net, the aim being to score points by making the ball reach the ground on the opponent's side of the court”.That is the definition of volleyball according to oxforddictionary.com. Some of the first questions that get asked when someone hears about this game, is “where did it start”, “what is the point in it”, and “who invented it”? When asked, the majority of people wouldn’t know all of these answers right off of the top of their head, so here is some answers.

Volleyball started on February 9, 1895, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. A P.E. Teacher at YMCA by the name of William G. Morgan, invented a game called Mintonette, just to pass time, and he probably didn’t realize is how big this game would become. He wanted the game to have some characteristics of handball, tennis, and basketball. Morgan made this game for older people, so that they could get some exercise in, without too much effort. The first rules that Morgan had written down for this game were that they needed a net 6 ft 6 inches high and a 25 ft × 50 ft court. He had no limit for how many times they could touch the ball before passing it back over the net, as well as no limit on the amount of players that there could be on one side or the other. A game consisted of nine innings with three serves for each team in each inning.

At the first exhibition match, in 1895, Alfred Halstead noticed the amount of volleying in the game, and the name quickly got changed to volleyball, which was originally two words. The rules were then slightly changed by the International YMCA Training School, and then spread to many other YMCA’s throughout the country.

In 1916, the skill of the set and spike was introduced, in the Philippines, and in 1920, the three touch rule, along with the no jumping and hitting from the back row, was also introduced. The game of volleyball wasn’t actually played in the Olympics until the summer of 1924 in Paris, when it was then used as a demonstration event for American sports. After some discussion, it was finally added as a sport in the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Volleyball has continued to change through the years, and will probably still be changing for many years to come. The pace of the game has changed from being a grandparent friendly game, to a very competitive, and upbeat sport, yet no matter how the game changes, it still manages to capture the interest of many people all over the world.