How a gym teacher at a Massachusetts university invented a new sport to keep his students entertained and fit during the cold winter

It was the winter of 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts. At the International YMCA Training Schoolnow known as Springfield College, the football season had ended, the baseball season had yet to begin, and indoor sports were limited to marching, gymnastics, and some calisthenics.

The young men inside James Naismith‘s class was restless until, at the request of the school inspector Luther H. GulickNaismith invented a new game for his students. He called it “basketball” and introduced the match on December 21.

Naismith was a 30-year-old graduate student and physical education teacher Almontea mill town in Ontario, Canada. When tasked with his superintendent’s request for proper indoor sports, he initially tried in vain to adapt existing sports such as football and soccer.

As Naismith wrote in his posthumously published 1941 book, Basketball: its origins and development“I started studying games from the philosophical side,” analyzing the common elements of popular sports.

A good game, he reasoned, should be learned easily. Small-ball games (baseball, tennis, cricket, lacrosse) required additional equipment, such as a stick, bat, or racket, and took time to master. Sports that used large balls, such as rugby and football, were easier to learn, but tackling did not work indoors. Players of this new sport, Naismith concluded, are not allowed to run with the ball.

Drawing inspiration from childhood memories of a game called Duck on a Rock – in which a team of children threw rocks in an attempt to knock the other team’s ‘duck’ (a separate rock) off a larger rock – Naismith concluded that the ball formed an arc in a horizontal aim, so as not to encourage ‘roughness’.

With a football and two peach baskets borrowed from the gym’s building manager, Naismith set up a field and conducted a preliminary survey. set of rules on the notice board.

Some of Naismith’s original rules still apply. Rule 1: “The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.” Rule 3: “A player may not run with the ball.” Rule 13: “The side that scores the most goals… will be declared the winner.”

KU Origins: James Naismith’s Basketball Rules

But the emerging basketball does critical differences of today’s match. For example, Naismith did not provide for dribbling: once a player had possession of the ball, he had to shoot or pass the ball. After two fouls, a player had to sit out until the next basket was made, and every three fouls in a row for one team awarded a point to the opponent.

When the first student entered the classroom on December 21, he gave something sounded like a “death knell” for the nervous Naismith: “Huh! Another new game!”

Although strange equipment slowed the pace of the game and the players had to retrieve the ball from the closed peach baskets after each point, the first few games were a success.

“The players were interested and seemed to enjoy the game,” Naismith wrote. “Word quickly got around that they were having fun… and just a few days after the first game we started having a gallery.”

The first public basketball game was held in Springfield on March 11, 1892 before 200 spectators. The players were teachers (including Naismith) versus students.

One teacher: a famous football coach Amos Alonzo Staggwho worked at the school at the time, “managed to have a hand in every scrimmage,” said the Springfield Republican wrote. But his football expertise “hindered him.” He ‘constantly made mistakes by pushing his opponents’.

“The teachers have worked hard and achieved wonders in terms of agility and strength,” said the Republican reported, “but they were not ‘in’ with the students, who had the advantage in science.” The students won the match 5-1.

Like basketball spread In the United States and the world as a popular indoor sport, aided by the YMCA network, it evolved to include open-bottomed baskets, dribbling and its own specialized ball, eventually taking the form of the modern-day game.

In recognition of the founder of the sport, who a educator at Springfield College and the University of Kansas, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame was founded after his death. Naismith was fittingly part of the whole first class.