Holyoke Man Invents Volleyball
On this day in 1895, a new game was first played at the YMCA in Holyoke. Many of the men who came to the Y were excited about another new game, basketball, but the Holyoke sports director was looking for a less strenuous indoor sport. Borrowing from basketball, tennis, and handball, William Morgan came up with "Mintonette," soon re-named volleyball. Over the next half-century, the game spread around the world. At the first Olympic competition in the 1964 games in Tokyo, the Soviet men and Japanese women took the gold medal. However, when the Volleyball Hall of Fame opened in 1987, it was in Holyoke, the Massachusetts mill town where the game was born.
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