Sports Equipment

Modern lifestyles are no good for kids. Today, many kids waste their days in front of a television or computer screen “gaming.” “Gaming” has been the ruin of many children’s educations and lives. What happens is that instead of learning math, science and English, they only pick up the skills required to operate the game they are playing.

In order to reverse this troubling trend, parents need to attempt to get their kids involved in outdoor activities. Families that have backyards for example may consider getting volleyball net. Volleyball might be just the sport to get your child out of the room.

Since the Olympics there are more people getting involved in gymnastics, track and field and all the other sports that are involved.  From beach volleyball to Ping Pong.

The game is played on a volleyball court 18 meters long and 9 meters wide, divided into two 9 m × 9 m halves by a one-meter wide net placed so that the top of the net is 2.43 meters above the center of the court for men’s competition, and 2.24 meters for women’s competition (these heights are varied for veterans and junior competitions).

This is a line 3 meters from and parallel to the net in each team court which is considered the “attack line”. This “3 meter” (or 10 foot) line divides the court into “back row” and “front row” areas (also back court and front court). These are in turn divided into 3 areas each: these are numbered as follows, starting from area “1″, which is the position of the serving player:

After a team gains the serve (also known as siding out), its members must rotate in a clockwise direction, with the player previously in area “2″ moving to area “1″ and so on, with the player from area “1″ moving to area “6″.

The team courts are surrounded by an area called the free zone which is a minimum of 3 meters wide and which the players may enter and play within after the service of the ball. All lines denoting the boundaries of the team court and the attack zone are drawn or painted within the dimensions of the area and are therefore a part of the court or zone. If a ball comes in contact with the line, the ball is considered to be “in”. An antenna is placed on each side of the net perpendicular to the sideline and is a vertical extension of the side boundary of the court. A ball passing over the net must pass completely between the antennae (or their theoretical extensions to the ceiling) without contacting them.

Written in part with Wikipedia:

The history of Olympic volleyball can be traced back to the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, where volleyball was played as part of an American sports demonstration event. After the foundation of FIVB and some continental confederations, it began to be considered for official inclusion. In 1957, a special tournament was held at the 53rd IOC session in Sofia, Bulgaria to support such request. The competition was a success, and the sport was officially included in the program for the 1964 Summer Olympics.

The Olympic volleyball tournament was originally a simple competition, whose format paralleled the one still employed in the World Cup: all teams played against each other team and then were ranked by wins, set average, and point average. One disadvantage of this round-robin system is that medal winners could be determined before the end of the games, making the audience lose interest in the outcome of the remaining matches. To cope with this situation, the competition was split into two phases with the addition of a “final round” elimination tournament consisting of quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals matches in 1972. The number of teams involved in the Olympic tournament has grown steadily since 1964. Since 1996, both men’s and women’s events count twelve participant nations. Each of the five continental volleyball confederations has at least one affiliated national federation involved in the Olympic Games.

The U.S.S.R. won men’s gold in both 1964 and 1968. After taking bronze in 1964 and silver in 1968, Japan finally won the gold for men’s volleyball in 1972. Women’s gold went to Japan in 1964 and again in 1976. That year, the introduction of a new offensive skill, the backrow attack, allowed Poland to win the men’s competition over the Soviets in a very tight five-set match. Since the strongest teams in men’s volleyball at the time belonged to the Eastern Bloc, the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics did not have as great an effect on these events as it had on the women’s. The U.S.S.R. collected their third Olympic Gold Medal in men’s volleyball with a 3-1 victory over Bulgaria (the Soviet women won that year as well, their third gold as well). With the U.S.S.R. boycotting the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the U.S. was able to sweep Brazil in the finals for the men’s gold medal. Italy won its first medal (bronze in the men’s competition) in 1984, foreshadowing a rise in prominence for their volleyball teams.

At the 1988 Games, Karch Kiraly and Steve Timmons led the U.S. men’s team to a second straight gold medal. In 1992, underrated Brazil upset favourites C.I.S., Netherlands, and Italy in the men’s competition for the country’s first Olympic gold medal. Runner-up Netherlands, men’s silver medalist in 1992, came back under team leaders Ron Zwerver and Olof van der Meulen in the 1996 Games for a five-set win over Italy. A men’s bronze medalist in 1996, Serbia and Montenegro (playing in 1996 and 2000 as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) beat Russia in the gold medal match in 2000, winning their first gold medal ever. In 2004, Brazil won its second men’s volleyball gold medal beating Italy in the finals.

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.