Volleyball began in 1895 as a gentler game for businessmen at a YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and it has kept changing shape ever since. These stories run from nine-inning games and a fire chief's exhibition team to Chinatown alleys, a factory team in Japan, a setter practicing from a wheelchair, and the sands of Waikiki, Santa Monica and Bondi Beach.
Every tile in a Volleyball game carries one of these. Open one to read it now, or leave them for the board to hand you.
Origins
nine stories
1A game for businessmen who found basketball too strenuous
On the tile: Mintonette1895
In 1895 William G. Morgan was the new physical director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and basketball was proving too strenuous for the local businessmen in his classes. He wanted a sport, as he put it, "with a strong athletic impulse, but no physical contact." So he borrowed: the net from tennis, the use of hands and walls from handball, innings from baseball, and, to begin with, the ball from basketball. He called his game Mintonette and hung the net about 6 feet 6 inches up, just above an average man's head.
Morgan's new game needed a ball, and nothing on hand was right. A basketball bladder, he recalled, was "too light and too slow," and the basketball itself was "too big and too heavy." So he asked A.G. Spalding & Bros. to make one, which they did at their factory near Chicopee, Massachusetts: leather over a rubber bladder, 25 to 27 inches around and 9 to 12 ounces. The official ball today measures 65 to 67 centimeters around and weighs 260 to 280 grams, which still fits inside Morgan's original range.
The game might still be called Mintonette if not for Alfred T. Halstead, a professor at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, now Springfield College. In 1896 Halstead pointed out that the whole object was to volley the ball back and forth over the net, and he suggested a better name: Volley Ball. Morgan agreed, and the name stuck. It stayed two words for more than half a century; the Volleyball Hall of Fame says it became one word in 1952.
Volleyball is often said to have been invented on February 9, 1895, and that date is still celebrated around the world. The International Volleyball Hall of Fame checked the record and found a problem. Morgan was still working at the YMCA in Auburn, Maine, through August 1895 and did not start his job in Holyoke until August 30. The Hall concludes the game most likely took shape that December. Based on its research, the FIVB recognizes July 7, the date the Hall gives for the first public demonstration in 1896, as World Volleyball Day.
When Morgan demonstrated his new game for YMCA physical directors in Springfield in 1896, he brought two teams of five men from Holyoke. One captain was the city's mayor, James J. Curran. The other was its fire chief, John Lynch, whose role went well beyond playing. The FIVB credits Lynch and a Holyoke doctor, Frank Wood, with drawing up the first rules from Morgan's ideas, and in a 1916 guidebook article Morgan himself credited the two men for their contributions. The Hall of Fame spells the doctor's name Woods.
Elwood S. Brown, a YMCA director, brought volleyball to the Philippines in 1910, and it caught on quickly; one timeline counts 5,000 public and private courts within a short time. Filipino players are credited with a new style of attack around 1916: pass the ball high so a teammate can strike it into the other court. That is the set and spike. They called the kill the bomba and the hitter a bomberino. The Volleyball Hall of Fame still lists the origins of the set and spike among the questions it is researching.
7Sixteen thousand balls, and no place at the Games
On the tile: World War I1919
World War I carried volleyball overseas. The YMCA's George J. Fisher made the game part of training in U.S. military camps at home and abroad, and he edited a volleyball rules guide for the Army and Navy. In 1919 more than 16,000 volleyballs went to the American Expeditionary Forces alone. Yet when the Allies held the Inter-Allied Games in Paris that year, volleyball was left out, judged not yet well enough known in the 18 participating countries for a balanced competition.
8The first national championship and a bold prediction
On the tile: Brooklyn 19221922
The first national volleyball championship in the United States was played at the Brooklyn Central YMCA on April 28 and 29, 1922, with teams from as far away as Pueblo, Colorado, and Toronto. Germantown's "Big Red Team" arrived with 125 straight victories and had not lost a series since 1912, but it finished second. Pittsburgh Central YMCA won. Afterward the winning coach, Harry A. Batchelor, admitted many would disagree, then predicted that volleyball was "destined to be a greater national game than base ball."
9The coffee house meeting behind a world federation
On the tile: Paul Libaud1947
The world federation began with a meeting at the Graf Coffee House in Prague. Paul Libaud, president of the French volleyball federation, met there with Polish and Czech representatives to plan an international body, one set of rules based on the American rules, and world championships. In 1947 fourteen national federations, from Brazil and Egypt to the United States and Uruguay, founded the Federation Internationale de Volleyball in Paris. Libaud was elected its first president and held the job for 37 years. The FIVB now has 222 affiliated national federations.
1The company team that became the Oriental Witches
On the tile: Daimatsu1953-1964
In 1953 Hirofumi Daimatsu became coach of the women's team at the Nichibo company in Kaizuka, where players such as Masae Kasai also worked. His training was so austere and unrelenting that he was called the "demon coach," and he taught new skills like the rolling dive and a floating change-up serve. His club became the core of Japan's national team, known as the Oriental Witches, which won 175 straight matches, upset the Soviet Union for the 1962 world title in Moscow, and took gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
2The captain of America's first women's volleyball medal
On the tile: Flo Hyman1974-1986
Flo Hyman stood 6 feet 5 inches and received the first athletic scholarship the University of Houston ever gave a woman. She captained the U.S. team that won silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the country's first Olympic medal in women's volleyball. In 1986 she collapsed near the end of a professional match in Japan and died that evening. The cause was Marfan syndrome, an inherited disorder that had never been diagnosed, and her death encouraged athletes at risk to get tested. The Women's Sports Foundation created a Flo Hyman Award in 1987.
Regla Torres trained from age 8 at a sports school in Havana and joined Cuba's national team at 16. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics she won gold at 17, which the Volleyball Hall of Fame says made her the youngest Olympic gold medalist in volleyball history. Cuba won again at Atlanta in 1996 and at Sydney in 2000, where Torres was named best spiker. A middle blocker and hitter, she won individual awards for serving, receiving, spiking and blocking, and the FIVB named her its best volleyball player of the century.
Shortly before the 1972 Olympics, Japan's setter Katsutoshi Nekoda broke his leg. He asked his coach to bring a volleyball to the hospital and practiced from a wheelchair. In Munich he ran the offense as Japan went undefeated in seven matches and won gold. Listed at about 5 feet 10 inches, he was a pioneer of quick sets and jump sets, and he is known as the inventor of the ceiling serve, hit high toward the lights. Japan's men won Olympic bronze in 1964, silver in 1968 and gold in 1972, all with Nekoda setting.
5Olympic silver with Italy's men, gold with its women
On the tile: Julio Velasco1996-2024
Argentine coach Julio Velasco took over Italy's men in 1989 and built one of the great teams of the 1990s, winning world titles in 1990 and 1994. Olympic gold never came: in the 1996 final in Atlanta, the Netherlands beat Italy in five sets. Late in 2023 Velasco was hired to coach Italy's women, who had never gotten past the quarterfinals in six Olympic appearances. At Paris 2024, with Velasco now 72, they dropped just one set in six matches and beat the United States in the final for gold.
Growing up on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Sergio Santos, known as Serginho, worked in a supermarket, an office and as a street vendor while playing club volleyball as a setter. When the libero position was created in 1998, he found his place as a back-row specialist and went on to win four Olympic medals with Brazil. Before the 2016 Rio Olympics he declined to play, feeling he had lost his agility, until coach Bernardinho persuaded him to return. Brazil beat Italy for gold, and Serginho was named the tournament's most valuable player.
Hubert Wagner captained Poland as a player, and as its coach he was known for intense workouts and the belief that any place but first was irrelevant. In 1974 he led Poland to its first world title. In 1975 the Soviet Union beat his team 3-0 in the European final. A year later at the Montreal Olympics, Poland met the Soviets for gold and won in five sets, the country's first Olympic title in men's volleyball. Poland did not reach another Olympic final until 2024, nearly 50 years later.
Inna Ryskal was born in Baku in 1944 and joined the Soviet women's national team in 1961. The team's power hitter, she played in four straight Olympics and won a medal at every one: silver at Tokyo in 1964, gold at Mexico City in 1968 and Munich in 1972, and silver at Montreal in 1976. When the Volleyball Hall of Fame inducted her in 2000, it said no other volleyball player had matched that record. She also won three European titles and the 1970 world championship.
At 5 feet 10 inches, Cuba's Mireya Luis did not look like a dominant volleyball player. Her jumping made up the difference. With a 36-inch vertical leap, she was known as the springiest spiker of her time and was often compared to Michael Jordan, since she seemed to climb past the antenna to hit. She was a starter on the national team by 15 and helped lead Cuba to world titles in 1994 and 1998 and three straight Olympic golds, in 1992, 1996 and 2000. She was also a three-time MVP at the World Cup.
Morgan's first rules would puzzle a modern referee. A game lasted nine innings, and a side scored only while serving. Any number of people could play, and a team could touch the ball as many times as it liked. Players could dribble the ball in the air up to a line 4 feet from the net. A server got two tries, and a serve headed into the net could legally be tapped over by a teammate. A ball that struck a wall and bounced back into play was still alive.
In a top volleyball match, one player wears a shirt that does not match the rest of the team. That is the libero, a position the FIVB introduced in 1998. The name is Italian for "free," and the libero may replace any back-row player, with those swaps not counted as substitutions. The trade-off is strict: under FIVB rules a libero may not serve, block or rotate into the front row. The FIVB says the role lengthened rallies and gave shorter players a vital part in the game.
3The kick that was legal, then illegal, then legal again
On the tile: Kicking1916-1995
Can you kick a volleyball? The answer has changed. U.S. rules in 1916 allowed the ball to be struck with the feet. By 1920 it could be played only with parts of the body above the waist, and in 1942 the limit dropped to the knees. Internationally, the FIVB congress in Athens in 1994 approved new rules, in force from January 1, 1995, allowing players to contact the ball with any part of the body, including the feet. The current FIVB rulebook says simply that the ball may touch any part of the body.
4The chemistry teacher behind the striped antennas
On the tile: Antennas1968-1976
The striped rods sticking up at each end of the net are antennas. They mark the sides of the space the ball must pass through, helping referees judge whether a ball crossed outside the sideline. The Volleyball Hall of Fame credits their creation to Jim Coleman, a U.S. national team coach who also taught chemistry for 20 years. Antennas were recommended to the FIVB congress in 1968, and a later decision moved them to sit directly above the sidelines after 1976. Today each is 1.80 meters long, with its top 80 centimeters above the net.
Sitting volleyball was first played in the Netherlands in 1956. It was created for wounded soldiers by combining volleyball with sitzball, a German game played sitting on the floor. The net stands just 1.15 meters high for men and 1.05 meters for women, the court is 10 by 6 meters, and a player's pelvis must stay in contact with the floor for valid play. One rule runs opposite to the standing game: players may block a serve, which FIVB volleyball forbids. The sport joined the Paralympics at Arnhem in 1980.
Under volleyball's rules, only the three front-row players may jump and spike near the net. Back-row players may hit the ball over from above the net only if they take off from behind the attack line, 3 meters back. At the 1974 World Championship in Mexico, Poland's Tomasz Wojtowicz amazed spectators by spiking from the back line, and Poland won the title. The Volleyball Hall of Fame credits the Polish middle blocker with pioneering back-row hitting, sending spikes across the court and through the opposing team.
Blocking was part of volleyball for almost 20 years before the rules described it. In 1938, after Czech teams perfected the move, it was officially written into the rules as a play at the net by one or two neighboring players. Much later, at its 1974 congress, the FIVB decided that after 1976 a team would still get three contacts after touching the ball on a block. That is why indoor teams today have three hits in addition to the block. In beach volleyball, a block still counts as one of the three.
Volleyball in Asia grew up bigger. When it joined the first Far-Eastern Games in Manila in 1913, it was played under the "Brown" rules, with 16 players a side so more people could take part. Japan and China later adopted nine-player teams, arranged in three lines on a larger court, with no rotation. The split lasted decades: at the 1955 FIVB congress in Florence, the Japanese federation adopted the international rules and pledged to introduce them gradually across Asia. Japan's famed coach Yasutaka Matsudaira began as a setter in nine-a-side play.
Morgan set his net about 6 feet 6 inches high, just above the head of an average man. In 1900 the net went up to 7 feet 6 inches, and by 1916 it had reached 8 feet. International rules now put the top of the net at 2.43 meters, just under 8 feet, for men and 2.24 meters for women. The players rose to meet it: the FIVB says a spike can be hit from up to 60 centimeters above the height of a basketball hoop, about 3.65 meters off the floor.
Where beach volleyball began is disputed. The story told by the Outrigger Canoe Club, recalled by an original member, is that early in 1915 George David "Dad" Center bought volleyballs and a net and put them up on the sand at Waikiki, between the surfboard lockers and the canoe shed. Center was a noted Hawaii swim coach who later helped coach the U.S. swim team at the 1920 Olympics. The FIVB says beach volleyball most likely began at Waikiki in 1915, though it also notes that most accounts place the start in Santa Monica, California.
Early beach games in Santa Monica, California, had six or more players a side. One summer day in 1930, not enough players showed up at the Santa Monica Athletic Club, so Paul "Pablo" Johnson and three others played two against two, the first recorded beach doubles game. At first they used just a quarter of the court, marked with lines drawn by their feet. On the full court they found that quick, skilled ball handlers could neutralize a taller player's spiking. They had so much fun they played almost nothing but two-man from then on.
The first official two-man beach volleyball tournament was held at State Beach, California, in 1947. It was organized by Bernie Holtzman, and the winners received no prize money. The next year a State Beach tournament rewarded the best teams with a crate of Pepsi. Money was not really the point. Holtzman, who began playing on the Santa Monica sand in 1935 and won 10 Open tournaments with Manny Saenz starting in 1948, once said, "Volleyball is God's gift to the beach bum."
Over Labor Day weekend in 1976, the Olympia World Championship of Beach Volleyball was played at Will Rogers State Beach in Pacific Palisades, California. The total purse was $5,000, and the winners, Jim Menges and Greg Lee, split $2,500 of it. The FIVB records a crowd of 30,000 spectators. By 1980 a sponsored U.S. tour offered $52,000 in prize money across seven events, and 20 years after that championship, beach volleyball made its Olympic debut in Atlanta.
In 1981 Randy Stoklos won the prestigious Manhattan Beach Open and added four second places, three thirds and a fourth that season. His earnings for all of it came to $1,050. The money grew with the game. Stoklos, a longtime partner of Sinjin Smith, became the first player to earn $1 million playing beach volleyball, reaching the mark when he won the 1992 Honolulu Open. In 2002, Holly McPeak became the first woman worldwide to pass $1 million in career earnings.
Jackie Silva first played volleyball on the beaches of Copacabana at 9, and at 18 she was part of Brazil's first Olympic women's volleyball team, in Moscow in 1980. Later she turned to the sand and teamed with Sandra Pires, who was 11 years younger. At the first Olympic beach volleyball tournament, in Atlanta in 1996, they won the women's gold, with another Brazilian pair taking silver. Four years later, at the Sydney Olympics, Pires became the first woman to carry Brazil's flag into an opening ceremony.
Misty May-Treanor was a 5-foot-9 former indoor setter, and Kerri Walsh Jennings had just played indoors for the U.S. at the 2000 Olympics when the two teamed up on the sand in 2001. Their Olympic record is hard to believe: gold at Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, 21 straight Olympic match wins, and only one set lost across all three Games. Starting in June 2007, they also won 112 consecutive matches and 19 straight tournaments before the streak ended in 2009.
At the 2005 FIVB tournament in Acapulco, Brazil's Larissa Franca and Juliana met Americans Kerri Walsh and Misty May in the gold-medal match. Each team had five tournament wins that season, and the winner would become FIVB Team of the Year. The match ran an hour and 40 minutes, which the Volleyball Hall of Fame calls a world record for the longest professional beach volleyball match. Brazil took the first set 28-26, the Americans won the second 42-40, and Larissa and Juliana took the third 15-13 for their first win over the pair.
Phil Dalhausser, born in Switzerland and raised in Florida, did not pick up volleyball until his senior year of high school. At 6 feet 9 inches he became a wall at the net, nicknamed the Thin Beast. With Todd Rogers, a defender called the Professor, he reached the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the world's top-ranked team, riding a 21-match FIVB winning streak. They were upset in their first match. They recovered to win the gold medal, and Dalhausser was named the tournament's most valuable player.