volleyball

You play on a 8-foot volleyball net in the Men's game. You play on a 7-foot-4-inch net in the Women's game.
The court is 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. The net divides the court into two 30'x30' sections.

• Games are to 15 points
• There are 6 players on the court. 3 close to the net(front court players) and 3 away from the net(back court players).
• The 3 close to the net can jump to attack or block the ball. However, if you are one of the 3 back court players, you can jump to attack the ball only if you takeoff from behind the ten-foot line
• You only can touch the ball if part of the ball is on your side of the court. I.e. part of the ball has crossed the extended plane of the net.
• You can only score if your team served to start the rally
• You win the rally if the ball drops on your opponent's court or if your opponent hits it outside of your court
• When your team wins the rally that was started by the other team's serve, your team has a sideout
• When your team sides-out, your team rotates your players' positions so the next server serves.
• Rotation of the players happen clockwise

Here is a graphical representation of players on the court:

----------------------  (the net)
 |   1     2     3   |
 |                   |
 |-------------------| (the ten-foot line)
 |                   |
 |   6     5     4   |
 |                   |
 |-------------------| (the back line)

Volleyball, in it's current form, was oringially created in Holyoke, Massachusetts by William G. Morgan, in 1895. It started at the Holyoke YMCA, downtown under the name "Mintonette." It was renamed to volleyball after a demo at Springfield, MA's YMCA (who stole credit for basketball from Holyoke).

The oringial rules were as follows:

• The net was 6 feet, 6 inches high.
• The court was 25 by 50 feet (in two 25 by 25 squares)
• The teams could have any number of people on them
• There was no limit to the number of times you can touch the ball before returning the serve
• You got a second try on serves
• The game was set up in a series of nine innings, where each side would serve 3 times in an inning.

The hall of fame is fairly meager, and it resides just outside of Heritage Park (near the famous merry-go-round)in downtown Holyoke. It is small, but the ciry is constantly improving it, as it is a huge part of it's heritage.

Informatione edited from volleyhall.org

Over the past few years the scoring system for volleyball has evolved from the one described by miles, to a rally point system. Under this format, a team does not need to be serving to score a point, and has the opportunity to score from every rally. It was decided that this would speed up the game and make it more interesting for both players and spectators.

In Australia each set is 25 points and must be decided by a two point margin. By looking around the internet it seems it is played to 30 points in the USA. (If anyone can clarify this please let me know.)The fifth set is still played to 15 points.

Sideout: winning the serve from the opposition. This used to be extremely important when a team could only score while serving. This phrase is most effective when called out just as the opposition is about to serve. Distraction techniques are wonderful things.

'Libero': refers to a player who is free to move from the sidelines into a back court rotation without official substitution, given that they swap with the player in that position. Liberos can easily be identified as they have no number and wear a different coloured shirt. A Libero player is one highly proficient in passing (digging), and usually swaps with a front court specialist. Or those whose forte is NOT passing.

Vol"leyball.

A game played by volleying a large inflated ball with the hands over a net 7 ft. 6 in. high.

 

© Webster 1913.