Sports Equipment

In Ice Hockey scoring a goal is similar to scoring a goal in Soccer. In Ice Hockey, the puck must be put completely over the goal line between the posts and under the bar either off the offensive player’s stick or off any part of the defensive player’s body. If the puck is inadvertently deflected by an offensive player’s skate or body, the goal counts, but not if the puck is kicked, batted, or thrown into the goal. The goal is placed within the playing surface, and players may play the puck behind the goal.

The goal structure in Ice Hockey is a frame 4 feet tall and 6 feet wide with a net attached. It is attached to the ice surface by flexible pegs and will break away for safety when hit by a player. Ice Hockey goals are placed within the rink and play behind the goal is allowed.

Hockey goals come in different sizes. There are Junior sizes and Official sizes.
Field Hockey is different from ice hockey not only in the size of the goal but the rules are also different.

  In Association Football (Soccer), the goal is the sole method of scoring. It is also the term used for the scoring structure. To score a goal, the ball must pass completely over the goal line between the goal posts and under the crossbar and no rules may be violated (such as touching the ball with the hand or arm).

A rectangular goal is positioned at the middle of each goal line. The inner edges of the vertical goal posts must be 7.3 m (8 yd) apart, and the lower edge of the horizontal crossbar supported by the goal posts must be 2.44 m (8 ft) above the ground. Nets are usually placed behind the goal, but are not required by the Rules.

Soccer nets come in a Junior size and an official size, which usually of a polyetaylene.
Junior size soccer net is 24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 2.5 mm twisted 5 inch square.
Official size comes in various sizes.

Official Size Soccer Net:  24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 2.0 mm twisted 5 inch square
Official Size Soccer Net:  24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 2.5 mm twisted 5 inch square
Official Size Soccer Net:  24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 3.0 mm twisted 5 inch square
Official Size Soccer Net:  24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 3.5 mm twisted 5 inch square
Official Size Soccer Net:  24′ x 4′ x 8′ x 10′ with a 4.0 mm twisted 5 inch square

• Rackets

There are many different types of materials used in the manufacturing of badminton rackets. There are many different materials ranging from carbon fiber composite (graphite reinforced plastic) to solid steel. Carbon fiber has an excellent strength to weight ratio, is stiff, and gives excellent energy transfer. Before carbon fiber rackets were made of light metals such as aluminum. Earlier rackets were made out of wood but are no longer manufactured because of the weight. The badminton racket is made to be very light. The rackets should weigh between 79 and 91 grams. The design of the rackets are limited to the rules of badminton. The oval head shape is still available but the new isometric head shape is now available.

• Strings

Babminton strings are high performance strings that range between 0.65 to 0.73 millimeters thickness. The tension on the strings is normally between 18 to 36 lbs. Recreational players like to string at a lower tension. It is often said that higher tension improves control where lower tension provides more power. This is not true. The higher tension causes the shuttle to slip off the racket which makes it harder to control and hit the shot accurately. The best way to select the right tension is to experiment.

•  Shuttlecocks

Shuttlecocks or shuttles is a high projectile with an open shape: the cone is formed from 16 overlapping goose feathers embeded into a rounded cork base. the cork is covered with thin leather or synthetic material. Shuttles with plastic or nylon skirts are normally uesed by recreational players not only because of the cost but also because the feather type break more easily. The nylon shuttle corks are made of a hard sponge instead of cork. Shuttles also come in different types, shuttles with a green stripe(slow speed), blue (medium speed), and red ( fast speed).  In colder wheather a slower one is used and in hotter a faster one is used.

• Shoes

Badminton shoes are lightweight and made of a high grip- non marking material. The shoes have very little laderial support. A high level of laderial support are used for activities where laderial movement is not expected. High laderial support will not be able to support the foot in badminton and could cause collapse at the point where the supports fail because the ankles are not ready for the sudden side movement which could cause sprained ankles and other injuries. For this reason a person should choose badminton shoes rather than general training shoes or running shoes. Badminton shoes have a very slim sole, lowering the centre of gravity, therefore causing less injuries. A person should also learn the proper footwork with the knee and foot in alignment on all lunges.

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.

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:

History
The 1992 Olympic games in Barcelona saw the first appearance of badminton. 4 events were held, with singles and doubles events for both men and women. Four medals were awarded in each event, including two bronzes. The next Olympiad, Atlanta 1996, had 5 events with the addition of mixed doubles. There was also now a playoff between the two semifinal losers to determine the sole winner of the bronze medal. That format has been used for the 2000 and the 2004 Summer Olympics.

China leads the medals won with 8 Gold,4 silver, and 10 Bronze

South Korea is next with 5 Gold, 6 Silver and 3 Bronze

Indonesia is next with 5 Gold, 5 Silver, and 5 Bronze

Denmark  has 1 Gold, 1 Silver, and 2 Bronze

Malaysia has ) Gold, 1 Silver, and 2 Bronze

Great Britain Has 0 Gold, 1 Silver, and 1 Bronze

The Netherlands has only 1 Silver medal

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.

When  Football Rules were formed.

While football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, its public schools (known as private schools in other countries) are widely credited with four key achievements in the creation of modern football rules. First of all, the evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its “mob” form and turning it into an organised team sport. Second, many early descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who had studied at these schools. Third, it was teachers, students and former students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable matches to be played between schools. Finally, it was at English public schools that the division between “kicking” and “running” (or “carrying”) games first became clear.

The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at Eton and Winchester colleges and his Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase “We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde”.

Richard Mulcaster, a student at Eton College in the early 16th century and later headmaster at other English schools, has been described as “the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football”. Among his contributions are the earliest evidence of organised team football. Mulcaster’s writings refer to teams (”sides” and “parties”), positions (”standings”), a referee (”judge over the parties”) and a coach “(trayning maister)”. Mulcaster’s “footeball” had evolved from the disordered and violent forms of traditional football: some smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously … may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges.

In 1633, David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, mentioned elements of modern football games in a short Latin textbook called “Vocabula.” Wedderburn refers to what has been translated into modern English as “keeping goal” and makes an allusion to passing the ball (”strike it here”). There is a reference to “get hold of the ball,” suggesting that some handling was allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the charging and holding of opposing players (”drive that man back”).

A more detailed description of football is given in Francis Willughby’s Book of Games, written in about 1660. Willughby, who had studied at Sutton Coldfield School, is the first to describe goals and a distinct playing field: “a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals.” His book includes a diagram illustrating a football field. He also mentions tactics (”leaving some of their best players to guard the goal”); scoring (”they that can strike the ball through their opponents’ goal first win”) and the way teams were selected (”the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness”). He is the first to describe a “law” of football: “they must not strike [an opponent’s leg] higher than the ball”

English public schools also devised the first offside rules, during the late 18th century. In the earliest manifestations of these rules, players were “off their side” if they simply stood between the ball and the goal which was their objective. Players were not allowed to pass the ball forward, either by foot or by hand. They could only dribble with their feet, or advance the ball in a scrum or similar formation. However, offside laws began to diverge and develop differently at the each school, as is shown by the rules of football from Winchester, Rugby, Harrow and Cheltenham, during in the period of 1810–1850.

By the early 19th century, (before the Factory Act of 1850), most working class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for over twelve hours a day. They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation and, at the time, many children were part of the labour force. Feast day football played on the streets was in decline. Public school boys, who enjoyed some freedom from work, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules.

Football was adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted its own rules, which varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Two schools of thought developed regarding rules. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham), while others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse). The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. For example, Charterhouse and Westminster at the time had restricted playing areas; the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the school cloisters, making it difficult for them to adopt rough and tumble running games.

Written in part with Wikipedia:

The compound bow was first introduced by a man named Holless Wilbur Allen.  It was in the year 1967 in the state of Missouri and for obvious reasons it became popular immediately.  The limbs of a compound bow are a lot tighter than the recurve or longbow which makes the compound boy more efficient than any of the other bows.

The compound bow uses a series of levering systems that gives the user an added edge.  These levers usually consist of cables and pulley that help to bend the string and give the archer the utmost power for his musculature exertion.  The compound bow has been a hunter’s best friend since 1967 and will continue to be until there is no more game left in the wild.