Sports Equipment

Childhood obesity is an increasingly serious and prevalent problem, and many parents are pointing the finger squarely at the television set. After all, children’s days consist of sitting at school all day followed by sitting in front of the television all night. And with both parents often working in any given family, children are left to grab whatever food they can, which is often chips, salsa, or other junk food.That’s why it’s a good idea, as a parent, to encourage the playing of sports in your children. If they have expressed an interest in basketball, for example, this can be a fantastic way for your kids to get exercise and have fun with other children. In order to encourage this extracurricular activity, purchase some basketball equipment. With the necessary equipment, your kids can practice their new skills after school rather than parking themselves in front of the television set.

The game of basketball was first played in December 1891.  The peach basket was originally used as the basket and it still had the bottom in it. The balls had to be retrieved manually after each point was scored. A hole was eventually made into the bottom so the ball could be poked  out with a long stick.  The peach baskets were used until 1904 when they were replaced with metal hoops and backboards.  The first official game was played January 20, 1892 with nine players and the score ended up 1-0.
In 1946 Basketball Association of America was formed, organizing the top professional teams and leading to greater popularity of the professional game.  Three years later BAA became the NBA.The tallest player to play basketball was 7′7″ and in today’s game Yao Ming stands at 7′6″.
Basketball size is different for men and women. But the court and the height of the net remain the same.

Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland were the eight founding nations of the International Basketball Federation(was given the abriviation title of FIBA) that was formed in 1932.

 Although a demonstration tournament was held in 1904, basketball wasn’t included to the Olympics until 1936.

The United States defeated Canada in the first game that was played outdoors.

Basketball in the World Championships has been dominated by the United States, and had lost only three titles. The first lost, in a controversial final game in Munich in 1972 against the Soviet Union.

In 1950, the first FIBA World Championship for men was held in Argentina. Three years later in 1953, the First Woman’s World Championship was held in Chile. Woman’s basketball was added to the Olympics in 1976.

In 1989 FIBA dropped the distinction between amateur and professional. And in 1992 professionals were allowed to play in the Olympics.

The United States dominated with the introduction of its Dream Team. With the developing programs in other countries, more nations began to defeat the United States. In the 2002 World Championships, the United States Team made entirely of NBA players ended up in 6th place.

In the 2004 Athens Olympics, Puerto Rico handed United States its first loss in the Olympics with a 19 point defeat.

Players from all the world can now be found playing in the NBA, including some of the coaches.

Volleyball was created by William Morgan, a physical education director at a YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The new game was originally called Mintonette. It was originally to be played as a pastime and was designed to be played indoors by any number of people. The game took on the characteristics of tennis and handball and another indoor sport that was created 4 years before just 10 miles away in Springfield, Mass. This new sport that was catching on very quickly was called basketball.  Mintonette(volleyball) was designed to be not as rough but still required a little bit of athletic effort.

• The first rules called for a net that was 6′6″ high, and a court that was 25′ x 50′, and any number of people could play.  A match consisted of nine innings, each team getting three serves in each inning, with any number of hits before serving the ball over the net to the opponents. In case of an error a second try was allowed. Hitting the net was considered a foul (with loss of a point) except in the case of a first try serve.
• After an observer noticed the volleying nature of the game at its first exhibition match played in 1896 at the YMCA International Training School, the game quickly became known as volleyball. The rules were slightly modified at the YMCA Training School, but the game caught on very quickly and spread around the country to all the various YMCAs.

The first volleyball that was used is in dispute. Some sources say that Spalding invented the first ball in 1896, while others say the first ball wasn’t invented until 1900. The rules have evolved over time. In 1916, the skill and power of the set and spike were introduced, and four years later the “three-hit rule” and back row hitting guideline were established. In 1917 the game was changed from 21 to 15 points.

In 1919, more than 16,000 volleyballs were distributed by the American forces to their troops and allies, which sparked the growth of volleyball to new countries.

The first country to adopt volleyball outside the United States was Canada in 1900, The International Foundation of Volleyball, was founded in 1947, and the first world Championships were held in 1949 for men, and in 1952 for women.

The Sport is now popular in Brazil, in Europe(where especially Italy, the Netherlands, and countries from Eastern Europe, have been major forces since 1980), in Russia and the other countries, including China and the rest of Asia, as well in the United States, Beach volleyball, a variation of the game played on sand and with only two players per team, became the International Federation -endorsed variation in 1987 and was added to the Olympic program at the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Opening ceremony

Main article: 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing will be held in the Beijing National Stadium, and begin at 8:00pm CST (12:00 UTC) on 8 August 2008. It has been announced that Canada’s Celine Dion and Taiwan’s Jay Chou would perform during the opening ceremony.

On July 21, NBC announced the Opening Ceremony would include performances by a cast of 15,000 and declared it would be the most spectacular Olympics Opening Ceremony ever produced.

Sports

This pictogram depicts Athletics.

Medals of the 2008 Summer Olympics: silver (left), gold (center), bronze (right)

The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men’s events, 127 women’s events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens.

Overall 9 new events will be held, which include 2 from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women’s team foil and women’s team sabre will replace men’s team foil and women’s team epee.

The Beijing Organizing Committee have released pictograms of the 35 Olympic disciplines. This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram’s likeness to Chinese seal script.

The following are the sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses.

Written in part with Wikipedia: