William Morgan and Mintonette
That the game of basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield MA is relatively well known. Naismith designed the game and its rules while serving as a physical education teacher at the Springfield YMCA. What is less well known is that he was under orders from his boss to create a physically demanding game which could be played indoors during the long and harsh New England winters. Under a two week deadline, Naismith came up with basketball; his game featured teams of nine playing against each other, and the ball could only be moved by passing it, if it touched the floor it was given to the other team.
William George Morgan was a student at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield and as a student of Naismith’s, enthused about the game of basketball. He later went to the YMCA in Holyoke MA as a physical education teacher. In 1895 he became the Director of Physical Education in Holyoke. There he came to the conclusion that the game of basketball as it was then played required physical strength and endurance that not all of his students possessed. Smaller men, those which were less physically conditioned, and older men were all incapable of competing favorably on the basketball court. Morgan began to look for an alternative game for those not enthused over basketball.
Morgan planned his new game by looking at the other indoor sports of the time, including basketball. He also looked at tennis and handball, among others, to design his new game, which he determined should be a game played indoors or out, between teams, and should avoid the potential for body contact. He designed a court on which the game would be played, 30′ by 60′, separated in the middle by a six foot net. The net prevented the opposing teams from physical contact, and the dimensions allowed the game to be played within most gymnasiums in the country.
Morgan next approached the AG Spaulding and Brothers Company to help him develop a ball for use in his new game, which he named Mintonette. After explaining the rules of the game and how it would be played Spaulding designed a ball which was lighter than the basketball then in use. The ball was about 25 inches in diameter, weighed about 10 – 12 ounces, and was encased in leather. Morgan called it a Minton ball and completed the final adjustments to the rules of his new game, which he explained to other Directors of Physical Education, prior to the first demonstration of the game itself at Springfield.
Morgan arranged for two teams of five men to first play the game of Mintonette on February 9, 1895. After watching the demonstration one of the audience, Springfield College Professor Alfred T. Halsted, commented that since the major portion of the action seemed to be volleying the ball between the teams, a better name for it might be volleyball. Morgan changed the name from Mintonette to Volleyball on the spot. Within five years AG Spaulding was producing volleyballs for mass consumption. Volleyball went on to become an Olympic sport in 1964, and beach volleyball, both indoors and out, is a major spectator sport today, born out of a Massachusetts winter.