Volleyball is invented - February 9th, 1895

On this day in 1895, the first game of volleyball was played at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gabe Luzier, and in this episode, we're talking about

(00:21):
the humble origins of volleyball, including its surprising connection to
that other sport created in western Massachusetts in the eighteen nineties,
you know, the one with the basket. The day was
February ninth, eighteen ninety five. The first game of volleyball

(00:44):
was played at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The sport
was invented by the wise twenty five year old physical
education director William Morgan. He had been looking for a new,
less vigorous activity for the center's older participants, and when
he realized none of the existing sports fit the bill,

(01:04):
he decided to create his own. William George Morgan was
born on January twenty third, eighteen seventy in Lockport, New York.
He spent his youth attending public school and working in
his father's boatyard on the banks of the Old Erie Canal.
When he was twenty one, Morgan enrolled at the Mount
Herman Prep School in Northfield, Massachusetts, and began playing football.

(01:29):
Not long after, he formed a friendship with James Naysmith,
a physical education teacher and the originator of basketball. Naysmith
was impressed with Morgan's skills on the field and invited
him to continue his education at the YMCA Training School
in Springfield, Massachusetts, now known as Springfield College. Morgan took

(01:51):
him up on the offer and played on the school's
famous championship football team for the next several years. In
eighteen ninety five, about a year after his graduation, Morgan
accepted the position of physical education director at the YMCA
in Holyyoke, less than ten miles up the road from Springfield.
One of Morgan's primary duties was to coordinate activities for

(02:14):
the wise participants. At the time, most of the members
wanted to play basketball, the hot new sport that Naysmith
had invented in Springfield less than four years earlier. However,
shortly into his tenure, Morgan realized that basketball was too
rough and physically demanding to be played by the middle
aged businessman who frequented his athletic center. The same was

(02:37):
true for most other indoor sports, so he started brainstorming
ideas for a new game. One that would have a
quote strong athletic impulse, but no physical contact to strike
that balance. Morgan combined features from multiple different sports. From tennis,
he took the net. From handball, he took the use
of hands. From baseball, he took the idea of innings,

(03:00):
though that would eventually be phased out, And from basketball
he took the ball itself, and when that proved too
heavy and cumbersome, he later swapped it for the rubber
bladder inside the ball. The resulting Frankens sport was played
a lot like badminton, so Morgan did one more bit
of borrowing and dubbed his new game mintonet. The name

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wasn't the only thing different from what we now know
is volleyball. First off, the game consisted of nine innings,
just like baseball. There also wasn't a limit to the
number of players on the court at any given time,
and each side was allowed to hit the ball as
many times as they needed to get it over the net.
Oh and spiking the ball wasn't a thing yet. That

(03:43):
Filipino innovation wouldn't arrive until nineteen sixteen. Beyond those few differences, though,
Morgan's sport was played much as it is today, as
evidenced by his original description of the gameplay mintonet play.
He wroteols keeping a ball in motion from side to
side over a high net, with any number of persons

(04:05):
being able to participate on each side. The game is
initiated by a person on one side hitting the ball
over the net to the opponent's side. The opponent must
not allow the ball to hit the floor, and the
goal is to return the ball over the net. This way,
the ball goes back and forth until it is hit
out or lands on the opponent's side of the floor.

(04:27):
Morgan first tried out the game with some participants that
the Holyoke Y on February ninth, eighteen ninety five. It
was well enough received that he continued to fine tune
the game for the rest of the year. Then in
eighteen ninety six, he organized an exhibition match at the
YMCA Physical Director's Conference. The other faculty members praised the

(04:49):
sport's accessibility and challenge, but Professor Alfred Halstaed did have
one suggestion. He thought the name minta net was too vague,
so he recommended placing it with volleyball, as he felt
it better express the object of the game to volley
the ball back and forth. Morgan welcomed the feedback and

(05:09):
adopted the new name right away, though it's worth noting
that the original version was two words, volley and ball.
It wasn't until nineteen fifty two that the name was
officially changed to just the one word. Following the successful
demonstration in eighteen ninety six, volleyball was gradually introduced a
YMCA's across the country. It steadily gained in popularity, and

(05:33):
in nineteen hundred the rules of the sport were formally
approved and published by the WISE National Board of Directors.
That same year, Morgan teamed up with local sporting goods
manufacturer AG Spaulding to finally solve the game's long standing
ball problem. The result was a specially designed ball, roughly

(05:53):
twenty five inches in circumference. Like a basketball, it was
made of a rubber bladder, encased and left only much
smaller and lighter. With its own distinct equipment and official
rule book, the sport of volleyball had finally arrived, and
over the next two decades the game would spread all
over the world. It was played at the WISE Athletic

(06:15):
centers in regions like India, China, Europe, South America and Africa,
and because the organization provided sports equipment and trainers to
the US Army, volleyball even found its way into foreign
markets that the YMCA hadn't entered yet, such as Cuba
and Italy. Volleyball's reach extended even further in the nineteen

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twenties when women began playing the game, and by the
nineteen thirties, national volleyball championships were being played in a
host of countries. In fact, the world's first national championship
was held by the newly formed Soviet Union, and one
match was even played on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater.
William Morgan got to witness the incredible expansion of his

(07:00):
homegrown sport, but on December twenty seventh, nineteen forty two,
he passed away from pneumonia at the age of sixty eight.
His time on the court had come to an end,
but the sport he created was just getting started. Up
until that point, the rules of the game had varied
from one region of the world to the next, but
in nineteen forty seven, an association was formed that would

(07:24):
govern volleyball at the international level, established in Paris by
representatives from fourteen different nations. It was called the International
Federation of Volleyball, or the FIVB. Under the leadership of
its first president, Francis Paul Libaux, the FIVB organized the
first Volleyball World Championships for men in nineteen forty nine

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and the first for women in nineteen fifty two. Since then,
the FIVB has grown into one of the largest sporting
associations in the world, with more than two hundred affiliated
bodies all over the globe. In nineteen sixty four, volleyball's
worldwide popularity helped it earn recognition as an official Olympic sport.

(08:09):
It made its debut that year at the Tokyo Games,
with the first gold medals going to the Russian men's
team and the Japanese women's team. The version played in
Tokyo was traditional indoor volleyball, but beach volleyball would eventually
be made an Olympic sport as well, first appearing at
the Atlanta Games in nineteen ninety six. The outdoor variant

(08:31):
of volleyball had been played in California since the nineteen twenties,
but due to the specificity of its venue, it had
taken a little longer to catch on in other places.
Nearly one hundred and thirty years after the sport's creation,
volleyball is now one of the most played team sports
in the world. According to the FIVB, there are approximately

(08:54):
seven million volleyball players in the US alone and more
than eight hundred million clubs. What had started as a
safe way for aging businessmen to get some exercise is
now one of the most popular pastimes on the planet.
I'm Gay Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little

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more about history today than you did yesterday. You can
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at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing

(09:39):
the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you
back here again soon for another day in History class.