On this day, at February 9. of 1895, William Morgan gathered several teachers at Springfield College to demonstrate the new sport.
Influenced by Naismith and basketball, Morgan invented a team sport in Holyoke on February 9, 1895, originally called a mintonette, which was less energetic and more suitable for older members of the YMCA, but still required athletic skill. Later, Alfred S. Halstead witnessed this new sport and changed his name to volleyball, because the aim of the game was to bounce the ball back and forth over the net.
127 years have passed since the first historic volleyball match. A sport that has always evolved, leaving the passion of those who practice it unchanged.
At the time, Morgan couldn’t find a game that resembled volleyball anywhere, so he created it with his own personal training and recreation methods.
Describing his early experiments, Morgan said: “In my search for a suitable game, tennis first came to my mind, but for that we needed balls, rackets, nets and other equipment, so I gave up, but the idea of the net remained. We raised the net to a height of 1.98 meters, above the average man’s head. We also needed a ball. At first I came up with the basketball ball , but it was too big and too heavy “.
Finally, Morgan asked for help in the A. G. Spalding and Bros. factory who made the right ball. They made a leather ball, which had a circumference of about 65 cm and weighed about 300 grams.
Subsequently, Morgan, with two other friends, wrote the first rules of volleyball.
Happy birthday.