This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in Images for East Bernard Express, November 17, 2022.
One of my granddaughters shared with me that the East Bernard High School Brahmarettes will begin their State Volleyball Playoffs against Buchland in Garland, Texas, the day this column will come out. If they win, they will play the Championship game in Garland, on Saturday.
School will turn out Thursday and Friday for this great event, and the whole town is excited about our superb volleyball team! The name of our newest gym tells you something about East Bernard’s winning volleyball tradition!
This current volleyball “fever” folks are enjoying reminds me of an old family photo I have cherished over the years (naturally, I cannot now find it among our many family heirlooms). It is a photograph of the Dime Box Rural High School Women’s Volleyball Team, taken around 1923 or 1924. One of the smiling players in the picture is my mother, dressed like the others, in enormous puffy bloomers, dark stockings, and high-top tennis shoes! The photo was black and white, but the Dime Box Lady Longhorns were wearing gold bloomers and purple stockings. My mother was very proud of her career as a high school volleyball player, but I can’t remember the details she shared. It was probably at least a District Championship.
Yes, you better believe there were volleyball teams in the 1920’s and even before that! According to a quick google, I discovered volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan who wanted to create a sport with less physical contact than other sport activities at that time. He borrowed the idea of a net from tennis and raised it higher, and he called the game, “Mintonette.”
Since a special ball was developed for the sport in 1900, my mother and her teammates would have used an official volleyball. However, they played on a clay court, which was not the best playing surface for the game. The court they played on was only 25’ X 50.’ At some early period in volleyball history, wooden parquet or special rubber (or synthetic) flat floors were developed. Some played the game on sand very early on in its history, with beach volleyball originating in Hawaii in 1915. After beach volleyball appeared in the 1992 Olympics, it became enormously popular, though it had already been introduced in the Olympics in 1964.
In Women’s Volleyball, it took years for standards to be set, for official rules to develop and be accepted. When volleyball first started with no rules, it was rather chaotic. Now it’s a well-planned game.
We are eagerly hoping the Brahmarettes will win State this week, but if they don’t, they will still be a great team who took Regionals!
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.