Did You Know...?

After the stress of the Christmas season I thought it was time for something a little lighter, so I did some searching into the history and trivia of volleyball. Sure, you know the ins and outs of your favorite sport, but did you know these fun volleyball facts?

· Volleyball was first invented in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895 by Dr. William Morgan, and was originally a combination of basketball, baseball, tennis and handball.

· The largest beach volleyball tournament was for the Usedom BeachCup 2007. It was held in Karlshagen, Insel Usedom, Germany, in July 2007, and featured 890 players.

· The sport wasn’t called volleyball at first. It was called mintonette, and it was meant to be a gentler sport for the older members of the YMCA. It became volleyball in 1896.

· The longest recorded volleyball marathon by two teams of six is 75 hours and thirty minutes, played in Kingston, NC in 1980.

· Most volleyball players jump an average of 300 times in a single match.

· The longest single game of volleyball was 51 hours long in Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia in November of 2005. (And for the record, the Guinness Book of World Records is the single most stolen book from public libraries.)

· The first volleyball net was only 6’6” high. (In the 19th century the average height of a volleyball player actually shrank according to the economic conditions they were living in.)

· 998 million people play volleyball around the world.

· Offensive spiking and setting first emerged in the Philippines in 1916.

· A volleyball designed especially for the sport was first created in 1900.

· Volleyball celebrated its first centennial in 1995.

· The Volleyball Hall of Fame can be found in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

· Beach volleyball first became an Olympic event at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

For more information on the ins, outs and history of this cool sport, visit http://www.volleyballproshop.com/.