PE 202

Lesson 2 – 3 History Of Volleyball and Terminologies of Volleyball

Morgan had attended the YMCA’s Springfield College where he had met James Naismith, the inventor of
basketball. After graduating Morgan continued to work for the YMCA and soon took the position of Director of
Physical Education in nearby Holyoke.

Having noticed that the speed of basketball made it too challenging for weaker men and older athletes,
Morgan set about devising a new game. Drawing on basketball’s original aims of being a sport that could be played
inside with minimal physical contact, Morgan later wrote that ‘tennis occurred to me, but this required rackets, balls,
a net and other equipment, so it was eliminated – but the idea of a net seemed a good one.’
Naming his game ‘mintonette’, Morgan took a year to refine the rules before staging an exhibition match. This
took place at the 1896 YMCA Physical Directors Conference at Springfield after Morgan impressed the director of the
professional physical education training school, Dr. Luther Gulick. The game received a positive reception from the
delegates including Dr. Alfred T. Halstead who suggested renaming it to Volley Ball to better reflect the objective of
the game. The two words were eventually combined to form Volleyball in 1952.
After the positive response to the exhibition game Morgan continued to experiment with the rules, firstly by
raising the height of the net and then by trying different types of balls to achieve the optimum weight and speed.
Sporting goods company A.G. Spalding & Bros. eventually created a new type of ball that achieved the perfect balance
he was seeking and, within just a few years, Morgan’s game had begun to spread around the world.

Terminologies of Volleyball

1. Ace – serve that the opponent failed to receive or not receive by the opponent.
2. Assist – any set that result in a kill or an attack, usually the second contact.
3. Attack – any attempt by the offense to score a point against the defense.
4. Cut or Cut Shot – an attack with an extreme angle.
5. Dig – a defensive contact after an opponent’s attack resulting in a playable ball.
6. Double – a fault in which the player contacts the ball with 2 body parts consecutively.
7. Dump – a surprise attack by a front row setter to catch the defense off guard.
8. Free Ball – a ball that is passed over the net because an attack wasn’t possible.
9. Joust – when two players try to push the ball into the other side.
10. Kill – a successful, legal, point-scoring play.

Other Term
1. Decoy – is an offensive play meant to disguise the spiker who will receive the set. A fake spike to throw
opponent’s off from focus and stall them so another teammate can take a point for the team.
2. Deep Set – set to be hit away from the net to confuse or disrupt timing of the blocker.
3. Dig – passing a spiked or rapidly hit ball. Slang for the art of passing attacked ball close to the floor. A diving
deep to pass a fast-moving ball with very little distance from the floor.
4. Dink – legal push of the ball around or over blockers. This is when the attacking player lightly taps the ball
over the net to an area on opponent’s court that is not guarded or occupied.
5. Double Block – occurs in volleyball when two defensive players approach the net and jump in unison to
deflect or block an attack attempt by the hitter back onto the opponent’s side of the net.