BULACAN STATE UNIVERSITY

CITY OF MALOLOS, BULACAN

COLLEGE OF SPORTS, EXERCISE AND RECREATION

TEAM SPORTS I: VOLLEYBALL

 UNIT
VOLLEYBALL: INTRODUCTION
1
LESSONS COVERED

1.1 Origins
1.2 Worldwide Growth
1.3 Volleyball in the Philippines

Duration:

3 hours (1 session of 3 hours)

Introduction

Volleyball, game played by two teams, usually of six players on a side, in which the
players use their hands to bat a ball back and forth over a high net, trying to make
the ball touch the court within the opponents’ playing area before it can be returned.
To prevent this a player on the opposing team bats the ball up and toward a
teammate before it touches the court surface—that teammate may then volley it
back across the net or bat it to a third teammate who volleys it across the net. A
team is allowed only three touches of the ball before it must be returned over the net.

This unit introduces the sport volleyball from its origins, to its growth worldwide and
the history of volleyball in the Philippines.

Objectives/Competencies

At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:

1. Discuss the history of Volleyball and its development.

2. Write the timeline of Volleyball.

3. Actively participate in the discussion regarding the history of the sport.

Pretest

Lesson

Volleyball has come a long way from the dusty-old YMCA gymnasium of Holyoke,
Massachusetts, USA, where the visionary William G. Morgan invented the sport back
in 1895. It has seen the start of two centuries and the dawn of a new millennium.
Volleyball is now one of the big five international sports, and the FIVB, with its 220
affiliated national federations, is the largest international sporting federation in the
world.

Volleyball has witnessed unprecedented growth over the last two decades. With the
great success of world competitions such as the FIVB World Championships, the
FIVB World League, the FIVB World Grand Prix, the FIVB World Cup and the FIVB
Grand Champions Cup as well as the Olympic Games, the level of participation at all
levels internationally continues to grow exponentially.
7.1 Origins

William G. Morgan (1870-1942), who was born in the State of New York, has gone
down in history as the inventor of the game of volleyball, to which he originally gave
the name "Mintonette".

The young Morgan carried out his undergraduate studies at the Springfield College
of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) where he met James Naismith
who, in 1891, had invented basketball. After graduating, Morgan spent his first year
at the Auburn (Maine) YMCA after which, during the summer of 1895, he moved to
the YMCA at Holyoke (Massachusetts) where he became director of physical
education. In this role he had the opportunity to establish, develop and direct a vast
program of exercises and sport classes for male adults.

His leadership was enthusiastically accepted, and his classes grew in numbers. He
came to realize that he needed a certain type of competitive recreational game in
order to vary his program. Basketball, a sport that was beginning to develop, seemed
to suit young people, but it was necessary to find a less violent and less intense
alternative for the older members.

At that time Morgan knew of no similar game to volleyball which could guide him; he
developed it from his own sports training methods and his practical experience in the
YMCA gymnasium. Describing his first experiments he said, "In search of an
appropriate game, tennis occurred to me, but this required rackets, balls, a net and
other equipment, so it was eliminated, but the idea of a net seemed a good one. We
raised it to a height of about 6 feet, 6 inches (1.98 meters) from the ground, just
above the head of an average man. We needed a ball and among those we tried
was a basketball bladder, but this was too light and too slow. We therefore tried the
basketball itself, which was too big and too heavy."

In the end, Morgan asked the firm of A.G. Spalding & Bros. to make a ball, which
they did at their factory near Chicopee, in Massachusetts. The result was
satisfactory: the ball was leather-covered, with a rubber inner tube, its circumference
was not less than 25 and not more than 27 inches (63.5 cm and 68.6 cm,
respectively), and its weight not less than 9 and not more than 12 ounces (252 gr
and 336 gr, respectively).

Morgan asked two of his friends from Holyoke, Dr. Frank Wood and John Lynch, to
draw up (based on his suggestions) the basic concepts of the game together with the
first 10 rules.

Early in 1896 a conference was organized at the YMCA College in Springfield,

bringing together all the YMCA Directors of Physical Education. Dr. Luther Halsey
Gulick, director of the professional physical education training school (and also
executive director of the department of physical education of the International
Committee of YMCA's) invited Morgan to make a demonstration of his game in the
new college stadium. Morgan took two teams, each made up of five men (and some
loyal fans) to Springfield, where the demonstration was made before the conference
delegates in the east gymnasium. The captain of one of the teams was J.J. Curran
and of the other John Lynch who were respectively, mayor and chief of the fire
brigade of Holyoke.
Morgan explained that the new game was designed for gymnasia or exercise halls,
but could also be played in open air. An unlimited number of players could
participate, the object of the game being to keep the ball in movement over a high
net, from one side to the other.

After seeing the demonstration, and hearing the explanation of Morgan, Professor
Alfred T. Halstead called attention to the action, or the act phase, of the ball's flight,
and proposed that the name "Mintonette" be replaced by "Volley Ball." This name
was accepted by Morgan and the conference. (It is interesting to note that the same
name has survived over the years, with one slight alteration: in 1952, the
Administrative Committee of the USVBA voted to spell the name with one word,
"Volleyball", but continued to use USVBA to signify United States Volleyball
Association).

Morgan explained the rules and worked on them, then gave a hand-written copy to
the conference of YMCA directors of physical education, as a guide for the use and
development of the game. A committee was appointed to study the rules and
produce suggestions for the game's promotion and teaching.

A brief report on the new game and its rules was published in the July 1896 edition
of "Physical Education" and the rules were included in the 1897 edition of the first
official handbook of the North American YMCA Athletic League.

1.2 Worldwide Growth

The physical education directors of the YMCA, encouraged particularly by two

professional schools of physical education, Springfield college in Massachusetts and
George Williams College in Chicago (now at Downers Grove, Illinois), adopted
volleyball in all its societies throughout the United States, Canada (in 1900 Canada
became the first foreign country to adopt the game), and also in many other
countries: Elwood S. Brown in the Philippines (1910), J. Howard Crocker in China,
Franklin H. Brown in Japan (1908), Dr. J.H. Gray in Burma, in China and in India,
and others in Mexico and South American, European and African countries.

By 1913 the development of volleyball on the Asian continent was assured as, in that
year, the game was included in the program of the first Far-Eastern Games,
organized in Manila. It should be noted that, for a long time, Volleyball was played in
Asia according to the "Brown" rules which, among other things, used 16 players (to
enable a greater participation in matches).

An indication of the growth of volleyball in the United States is given in an article

published in 1916 in the Spalding Volleyball Guide and written by Robert C. Cubbon.
In that article Cubbon estimated that the number of players had reached a total of
200,000 people subdivided in the following way: in the YMCA (boys, young men, and
older men) 70,000, in the YWCA (girls and women) 50,000, in schools (boys and
girls) 25,000 and in colleges (young men) 10,000.

In 1916, the YMCA managed to induce the powerful National Collegiate Athletic
Association (NCAA) to publish its rules and a series of articles, contributing to the
rapid growth of volleyball among young college students. In 1918 the number of
players per team was limited to six, and in 1922 the maximum number of authorized
contacts with the ball was fixed at three.

Until the early 1930s volleyball was for the most part a game of leisure and
recreation, and there were only a few international activities and competitions. There
were different rules of the game in the various parts of the world; however, national
championships were played in many countries (for instance, in Eastern Europe
where the level of play had reached a remarkable standard).

Volleyball thus became more and more a competitive sport with high physical and
technical performance.

1.3 Volleyball in the Philippines

The history of volleyball in the Philippines refers to the history of volleyball in the
Philippines as a recreation and as a sport. Philippine volleyball history began in 1910
when the Philippines was a United States territory (1898–1946). The Filipinos have
made significant contributions to volleyball in its evolution as a professional and
international game. The Filipinos continued playing volleyball up to the modern-day
period in its status as an independent republic (1946–present).

It was introduced to the Filipinos by an American named Elwood S. Brown, the then
Physical Director of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). It became a
popular game held in backyards and at beaches in the islands. At first, the Filipinos
invented their own rules for the game. US soldiers who were assigned to the
different islands of the Philippine during the period also helped in the widespread
introduction of volleyball to the Filipinos. These American military servicemen
encouraged the Filipinos to join them in playing during their time-off from military
duties. Early in the history of the game of volleyball in the Philippines, the Filipinos
used trees as makeshift net holders (the net was hung between the two chosen
trees).

The date July 4, 1961 marks the birth of the Philippine Amateur Volleyball
Association. The director for the Playground and Recreation Bureau, members of the
business community and others gathered to create an organized volleyball
association in the Philippines. The Philippine Amateur Volleyball Association was
later named the Philippine Amateur Volleyball Association and is currently called the
Philippine Volleyball Federation. It is affiliated with and accredited by the Philippine
Olympic Committee, Asian Volleyball Confederation and the Federation International
de Volleyball.

The Filipinos contributed two items to modern-day volleyball

1. Inspiration for the three-hit limit

The first contribution was that the Filipinos inspired American players to create the
"three-hit limit" for each player in modern-day volleyball. This number of limits in
hitting the ball was based by American volleyball players from the Filipino way of
letting each player hit the ball before sending or "volleying" it over to the side of the
opponent team. The Americans revised this method to become the "three-hit limit"
because the old way of taking turns in hitting the ball took too much time, and had
been observed to affect the intensity of the game and the motivation of the
participating volleyball players (lessens the "challenge and the competitive nature" of
the game).

2. Setting and spiking the ball

The second Filipino contribution was the "set and spike" maneuver, also known as
"set and hit", "setting and spiking", or just "spike". A spike is a form of volleyball
"attack" done by the player by jumping, raising one arm above the head and hitting
the ball so it will move quickly down to the ground on the opponent's court. The set,
on the other hand, is an over-hand pass done by the setter (another player) using
the wrists to push finger-tips at the ball.

It was after accepting the new set of rules created by the Americans regarding the
"three-hit limit" when the Filipino volleyball players at the time invented the "set and
spike" maneuver. The new technique invented by the Filipinos prompted American
enthusiasts and participants in volleyball to call it as the "Filipino bomb", because
"spiking the ball" was like a "hit" or a form of "attack" that can squash or "kill" the
opportunity of the opponent team to hit the ball back for a possible point or win. A
more apt description of "hitting and spiking" is that it is "an offensive style of passing
the ball in a high trajectory to be struck by another player."

Activity 1.1

Construct a timeline of the history of Volleyball since its creation to present.

Reflection / Learning Insights

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Post-test

Answer the following. Put your answers in the blank provided.

GLOSSARY

ANSWER KEY

ONLINE REFERENCES

https://www.fivb.com/en/volleyball/thegame_glossary/history

https://www.sportsrec.com/547855-the-history-of-volleyball-in-the-philippines.html

https://www.liveabout.com/volleyball-history-3429243

https://www.athleticscholarships.net/history-of-volleyball.htm