Volleyball 1: Early Development
After it was invented in December of 1891, basketball quickly became popular at many YMCAs across North America. But those were YMCAs with a membership of young men who enjoyed running up and down a gym floor.
William G. Morgan was physical director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895. Most of his clients were middle-aged businessman who found basketball too strenuous. So Morgan decided to create a sport that would offer them exercise without making them run.
He strung a badminton net across a gym floor, brought out the bladder of a soccer ball, and split the men into two teams that volleyed the improvised ball back and forth across the net. Because it was patterned after badminton, Morgan called the new sport "mintonette." In his original rules, the court was 25 by 50 feet and the net was 6 feet, 6 inches high. In a bow to baseball, a match was made up of nine innings, with three serves for each team per inning. There was no limit to the number of players on a team.
In 1896, Morgan and some of his members traveled the 10 miles to a YMCA directors' conference in Springfield, the birthplace of basketball, the demonstrate the new sport. Dr. A. T. Halsted suggested that the name should be changed to "volleyball," and Morgan agreed.
The following year, the rules were published in the first Official Handbook of the Athletic League of the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America. As a result, many physical directors introduced volleyball at their YMCAs.
A new set of rules, as revised by A. E. Day, was published in 1900. Match was set at 21 points, the use of innings was discarded, and the net was raised to 7 feet, 6 inches. Volleyball soon spread to other countries, mainly because of the YMCA, although it was brought to Cuba in 1906 by an Army officer. Hyozo Omori, a graduate of the YMCA's International Training Institute in Springfield, introduced the sport to Tokyo in 1908; Max Exner and Howard Crokner brought it to China in 1910, and Elwood Brown introduced it to the Philippines at the YMCA in Manila, also in 1910.
The rules were revised again in 1912. The number of players was set at six per team, the size of the court was increased to 35 by 60 feet, and rotation of players before service was established. For the first time, the ball was standardized, with a circumference of 26 inches and a weight between 7 and 9 ounces.
Volleyball was added to the recreation program of the U. S. armed forces in 1914 and American soldiers introduced the sport to France and Italy during World War I. The sport also became popular at many colleges. In 1916, the YMCA and the National Collegiate Athletic Association collaborated on a new set of rules.
A match was defined as the best two-out-of-three games, and the number of points required to win a game was lowered from 21 to 15. The net was raised to 8 feet and the weight of the ball increased to between 8 and 10 ounces. Also, the rule that a player couldn't have two consecutive contacts with the ball was added.
A team was allowed an unlimited number of touches before sending the ball over the net before 1920, when another revision set the limit at three. Court size was reduced to 30 by 60 feet.
The basic nature of volleyball was changing, along with the rules. By design, it had originally been a slow game for older men. Many young men (and some young women) were being introduced to volleyball through colleges, as well the armed services and YMCAs, and they were making it a faster-paced sport requiring a full range of athletic skills.
Spiking and blocking became essential elements of volleyball during the early 1920s, requiring some rules changes. In 1922, spiking was formally defined and limited to front-line players only. Beginning in 1937, multiple ball contacts were allowed to defend against violent spikes, and in 1938 blocking was defined in the rules as "a counteraction at the net by one or two adjacent players."
The scoring system also changed a couple of times. In 1922, a team was required to take two consecutive points to win a game if the score was tied at 14, and that was changed to require only a 2-point advantage for victory.
Other rules changes made during this period:
- 1922: Double hit fault was added
- 1923: A team comprises six players and 12 substitutes; it's a foul if a player touches the opponents' court during play; team winning serve has to rotate clockwise and the player on the right side of the back row is the server
- 1925: Two timeouts allowed each team per game; ball weight changed to between 9 and 10 ounces
- 1926: Net length set at 32 feet
- 1935: Touching the net during play is a foul; a player cannot step off the court while the ball is in play on his side of the court (which prevented the practice of getting a running start from outside the boundary to spike the ball); crosses added to floor to mark player positions
It should be noted that these were the rules promulgated, first by the NCAA and YMCA and then by the U. S. Volleyball Association (USVBA), which was founded in 1928. Rules varied in Europe and other countries. There were a couple of attempts to form an international association to standardize rules during the 1920s and 1930s, but they didn't succeed.
The first national tournament was conducted by the YMCA in 1922, but it was limited to teams representing YMCAs. The USVBA held its first national men's tournaments in 1928.