The History of Volleyball

Volleyball originated in the United States. In 1895, a sports worker named William Morgan invented it in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

At that time, tennis and basketball were very popular. Mr. Morgan thought that basketball was too intense and tennis was too light. He wanted to find an indoor entertainment project that was moderate in intensity and interesting, and that could be played by men, women, old and young. He wanted to move the then popular tennis ball indoors and play it with his hands on the basketball court. At the beginning of this game, he hung a tennis net on the basketball court and played the game by hitting the ball with the basketball net like playing tennis.

However, the indoor basketball court was small and the tennis ball was easy to go out of bounds, so he made some improvements: first, he changed the rule that the tennis ball was allowed to hit back after it landed to not allow it to land; second, he enlarged the size of the tennis ball; third, the basketball was too big and too heavy to play the game as expected, so he tried a basketball bladder instead. The basketball bladder was too light and floated in the air. It was inconvenient to play and difficult to control. But after the trial, the effect was very good, so he decided to use this ball. Although the international standard ball has gone through a hundred years and has been improved thousands of times, the specifications of the ball are almost the same as the first generation of balls.

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Develop

The first volleyball rules were published by American JY Cameron through Spaulding Sports Publishing House. At that time, it stipulated the use of “rotation system” and “15 points per game”. In 1918, it also stipulated that the number of players on the court should be 6. Since then, 6-player volleyball has become popular in Europe and the United States.

Volleyball was introduced to Asia in 1900. In the early days, the number of players on the field was not 6 but 16. According to Mr. F.S. Brown, an American who introduced volleyball to the Philippines, “At that time, the United States had gymnasiums, which were more suitable for 6-person volleyball. There are many Asians, and most of the games are played outdoors, so we need to consider that most people can participate in volleyball.” Therefore, Mr. F.S. Brown and Mr. F.H. Brown introduced 16-person volleyball to the Philippines and Japan. Therefore, the 16-person system was adopted at the first Far Eastern Games in 1913. It evolved into a 12-person system at the Fourth Far Eastern Games in 1919, and a 9-person system at the Eighth Far Eastern Games in 1927. In July 1950, at the National Summer Study Conference for Sports Workers held by the All-China Sports Federation, the rules and competition methods of 6-person volleyball were introduced for the first time, and the 6-person system was officially adopted in 1951. Since then, 6-person volleyball has been gradually developed throughout the country.

Indoor Volleyball

Although indoor volleyball has a much longer history, it has been increasingly challenge by beach volleyball in recent years. Therefore, it has begun to make some improvements to its rules. The most important of these is the introduction of the “libero” rule.

The establishment of the libero is to increase the number of rounds of each ball in volleyball games, strengthen defense, and make the game more exciting. The libero wears clothes of different colors from his teammates and can move anywhere in the backcourt, but is not allow to serve, spike, hit the ball over the net or participate in the frontcourt attack. During the game, the team can choose to send a libero or not. If the libero is injure, the head coach can negotiate with the first referee and let another player wear the libero’s clothes and act as a libero. The libero is not necessarily a dedicated position. For example, Li Tieming of the men’s volleyball team was the main attacker in the Liaoning team and the libero in the national team.

Volleyball game

　In a volleyball game, two teams of six players each stand in two rows. With the net in the middle as the boundary, and use their hands to perform actions such as serving, padding, passing, spiking, blocking, etc. to form one of the offensive and defensive ball sports. In addition, there is also a 9-player volleyball game that was once very popular in the Far East.

The 6-man volleyball game uses a point-per-ball system. Where a team gets one point when it attacks successfully or when the opponent makes a mistake or commits a foul. International volleyball matches generally use a best-of-five system. The score for each of the first four games is now 25 points. The score for the last game is 15 points. A game is only consider a win if the score exceeds two points. But there is no cap on the score for each game, which means that it can be continue indefinitely.

Beach Volleyball

Beach volleyball involves two players. Rather than the six players per team of indoor volleyball, and is play on the beach.

Unlike indoor volleyball, beach volleyball only has a chance to score when serving. The game adopts a best-of-three system, with each game scoring 21 points. Only a two-point lead is consider a winner. There is no upper limit on the score. A win is consider a win by winning at least two points. The third and final game is a 15-point system.