Volleyball Facts: Both Interesting and Useful
Whether you are a die-hard volleyball athlete or simply enjoy a round of games during the summer with your buddies, you might find it interesting to learn a few volleyball facts. We are going to list some of the most well-known as well as some relatively unknown facts about volleyball. So turn your learning switch to the “on” position—here we go!
Let’s start this list of volleyball facts off with some history behind the sport, eh? Volleyball was developed by Mr. William G. Morgan, a YMCA instructor, in 1895 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He was trying to find a sport that was both active yet not completely draining for the members of the YMCA club. He took a few elements from many different popular sports and combined them together to develop what were essentially the beginnings of a whole new sport! Five years later he had a ball designed and created specifically for this sport. Although the sport was pretty different in its early stages from the way it is played now, the fundamentals are roughly the same.
Examples of how it has grown over the years are numerous, but take for example the fact that the common setup of “set and attack” was not incorporated into the game until 1917 and that the “three hits per side” rule wasn’t integrated until 1920. We all know that volleyball played in a sandy pit or on the beach are hugely popular in modern times, but it wasn’t always that way. The first volleyball game to be played on a sandy surface wasn’t done so until the 1930’s—35 years after the creation of the game! It wasn’t until 1948 that the first tournament was performed on sand.
The acceptance of volleyball as a legitimate competitive sport occurred around 1928 when the United States Volleyball Association was formed (which is now known as USA Volleyball). An international governing body was formed for volleyball in 1947 which quickly led to the first world championship taking place just two years later. Indoor volleyball became an official Olympic sport in 1964, in which the Japanese women’s team took the gold. The next two Olympic volleyball competitions held in 1968 and 1972 saw the Soviet Union’s women dominating the games. It wasn’t until 1984 when the United State’s men’s team took home an Olympic gold medal in the sport—which seemed about time, to say that the sport was founded in America! Beach volleyball was elected as an official Olympic sport in 1996, and the American men’s teams took both gold and silver in the next two Olympics.
Now that the history lesson is over, let’s go on to the fun volleyball facts! William Morgan had actually named this sport Mintonette. Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? Luckily Alfred Halsted felt it necessary to rename the sport to Volleyball to reflect the game’s real goal of “volleying” the ball back and forth. The first net used during a volleyball game was actually a tennis net, which measured 6 feet and 6 inches in height. In modern games, the net in a men’s game measures 7 feet and 11-5/8 inches and in a women’s game measures 7 feet and 4-1/8 inches tall. A.G. Spalding and Bros. was the creator of the first actual volleyball. The forearm pass wasn’t integrated into the game until the 1940’s. –And if you’re ever interested in seeing the Volleyball Hall of Fame, you’ll have to go to Holyoke, Massachusetts, which is quite suiting as being the founding town of the game.
So there you have it—a plethora of volleyball facts to indulge your noggin’! Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two about the great sport of volleyball!