Horizons Edge Volleyball Club Tryouts
The Origins of The Game and Our Club
Horizons Edge Volleyball Club tryouts are taking place on Sunday, October 25. Local girls age 12 – 18 can try out for one of our travel teams. This is the second year of the HEVC and we couldn’t be more proud as several of our teams who won several tournaments last year. We look forward to another great year!
Before the tryouts begin, we dug into the history and origins of the fun and fast-paced game of volleyball. If you thought volleyball began in the sands of California, you are on the wrong side of the country.
Volleyball began in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1895. William G Morgan the physical director of the YMCA created and designed the game to be an indoor sport for businessmen who found the new game of basketball too vigorous. (Basketball was created 4 years earlier just down the road in Springfield, MA).
According to Olympic.org, volleyball was originally known as ‘mintonette’, this name was in reference to the game’s similarity to badminton. Morgan had devised the game as a combination of basketball, baseball, tennis, and handball. A few years later Alfred Halstead renamed it volleyball since the object of the game was to volley the ball back and forth over of the net.
Originally Morgan and colleagues used actual basketballs and basketball bladders to play. Neither worked as one was just too heavy and the other too light. It took nearly 5 years of experimentation until a lighter and smaller ball was devised. This new ball changed the game to allow a new range of capabilities and speed for the players.
Volleyball remained mostly a recreational sport until the early 1930’s. Rules were different throughout the world, but national championships began to show up. Finally, in 1947 the Federation International De Voley-Ball (FIVB) was created and two years later the first World Championships took place.
The Olympics finally adopted volleyball in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
The sport continues to grow and change. There are many levels of competition amateur to professional. More than 800 million people worldwide enjoy playing volleyball.
Let us not forget about the possible guess that volleyball began on the beaches of California. Beach volleyball may have begun on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii in 1915, and by 1922 several clubs in the Santa Monica area of California sprung up. Beach volleyball had to wait until 1996 in Atlanta to become an Olympic sport.
As we prepare for our HEVC girls’ tryouts we remember the origins of a game that is nearly as old as basketball. Please email info@horizonsedgeva.com with any questions regarding age requirements. Click here to register for the tryouts today!
