Mintonette - One Of The Most Famous Sports In The World

Can you tell me what Mintonette is? No clue? How if I ask you what is volleyball? I bet you can tell me the answer. Not so many people know that Mintonette and Volleyball are actually the very same thing. A few years after this game was created by The Physycal Education Director of YMCA Massachusetts, William G Morgan, the name Mintonette is no longer used for this game and not so many people know about this term since then.

It all started in 1895, the time when Basketball just caught the attention of many sports fan in the USA after it was introduced a few years before in the Springfield YMCA by James Naismith. Basketball got extremely popular almost instantly, young people in America really enjoyed playing this full-action game, however not a lot of older people can really enjoy this sport because basketball also involves lots of physical contacts that could become quite rough. Seeing that, William Morgan had an initiative to make a sport as an alternative to basketball that can also be played by older people, he intended to create a sport with less physical contacts but still full of action, and that becomes the beginning of the volleyball history.

William Morgan put together several elements from different other sports like Basketball, Baseball, and Tennis in order to create a game that he desired, and then he chose the name Mintonette for the sport he just invented. Even though the rules, also the skillsets and techniques being used in this game back then were very much different with what we can see today, Mintonette was actually created to be suitable for indoor and outdoor game. Back then, any numbers of player can participate as long as they can fit into the court, the game begins with a serve, then the players just need to keep the ball in motion from one side to the other until one side fails to hit and the ball touches the ground.

One of the first improvements of this sport is actually the name, the name Mintonette was thought to be not very much appealing and less descriptive, so according to how the game is played, finally volleyball was chosen to be the proper title of this game. Since then, the name Mintonette is no longer used, and the rules also started to change, in 1917 the score was changed from 21 to 15 and a few years after that the three hits per side rule was introduced.

As volleyball growing in popularity some national and international organizations managing this sport were started to appear, and this made volleyball travel far away from its origin to many different countries. This game finally made it into the Olympic for the first time in 1964 when it was held in Tokyo, after that it didn't take very long until it became one of the most played sports in the world. The improvements of this sport didn't stop there, it continued to evolved until it initiate the invention of a new kind of sport named Beach Volleyball, and that makes volleyball even more favored by so many people.