Volleyball is a game played by two teams with six players on each side, in which the players use their hands to hit the ball back and forth over a high net, trying to make the ball hit the ground of their opponent’s side before it can be returned. To prevent the ball from hitting the ground, a player on the opposing team has to hit the ball up and toward a teammate before it touches the ground. That teammate may then hit it back across the net or hit it to another teammate who hits it across the net. A team is only allowed to touch the ball three times before it must be returned over the net.
The sport volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, a physical director of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Morgan looked at the sports around him and picked the aspects he thought suited his idea the best. The idea that Morgan had was that the ball came from basketball, the net came from tennis, and the use of hands from handball. This got combined and made the sport that we call today volleyball. Morgan later introduced the sport called Minnont, which was the original name before the name volleyball. They also made a few changes like making the ball lighter and smaller which was introduced in 1900. They also raised the net higher just above the head to the average height of a man or woman. Later on, it became part of the Young Men’s Christian Association and became a new sport in the USA where it’s played by over 800 million globally.
However, the rules for playing volleyball kept establishing throughout the years that points per set were from 21 points to 15 points back in 1917. Then, a few years later they came up with new offensive techniques which now we call setting and spiking. As a result, there were a few championships in different countries but they didn’t set out the rules for playing until 1947, when the representatives from 14 different nations which were Italy, Poland, Uruguay, Belgium, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, France, Egypt, Romania, Brazil, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the USA. The leadership of France’s Paul Liberty was the one who set up the association that would govern international volleyball at an international level. According to the Olympic Games, world championships keep occurring to be the greatest attractions for the game, such as added events like the FIVB World League, the FIVB World Grand Prix, and the FIVB World Cup, which has come over the years making it enter to be as an Olympic sport. While the popularity of Volleyball keeps growing more and more it was granted an Olympic status in the year 1957 by the International Olympic Committee also called IOC. Volleyball made its Olympic debut in Tokyo in the 1964 Games, in which the top three teams that bagged the most golden medals were Italy, Brazil, and the Soviet Union. The Olympics also accepted beach volleyball which also became very popular and was included in the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. Also, they introduced the FIVB Volleyball Beach World Championship in 1997 and it’s hosted every alternate year.
