#springfield college

[tjkl895]

Coach Holder (https://www.instagram.com/p/DWZkbEzmMf8/?img_index=2)

[letthemysterybe]

Springfield College

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Dr. James Naismith (6 November 1861 – 28 November 1939), the inventor of basketball, practiced with his wife in 1928.

In 1891, 31-year-old Canadian graduate student James Naismith needed to solve a problem in Springfield, MA, where he worked as a gym teacher at a YMCA (now Springfield College).

His students, forced indoors because of winter, had become rowdy and needed a way to stay in shape.

They had a lot of energy but no way to burn it off. It was too cold to play football and baseball, and too dangerous to play those sports in the gym.

The school asked Naismith to invent a new indoor sport. Naismith remembered a rock-tossing game he played as a child.

How about a game where players threw a ball at a target? The team that tossed the most balls into the target would win.

Naismith called his new game "basketball" and wrote up 13 rules. Two peach baskets and a soccer ball were the equipment.

Naismith put the baskets at each end of the gym, nailed 10 feet above the floor.

The teams each had nine players. Naismith threw the ball in the air for the first tipoff.

On 21 December 1891, the game of basketball was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The new sport quickly grew in popularity. Naismith's students went on to become teachers and coaches, spreading the game.

Teams sprung up at high schools and colleges. Boys and girls across the nation began playing basketball.

Basketball became an Olympic sport in 1936.

For the first Olympic basketball game, Naismith tossed the ball for the tipoff.

The game James Naismith invented as a winter "distraction" had turned into a global sport.

[hagleyvault]

James Naismith, the Canadian-American gym teacher who invented basketball, was born on this date, November 6, in 1861. Naismith left Canada in 1891 after accepting a job as a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Asked to devise a game to keep his charges busy indoors during winter, Naismith created the game of basketball; the first game was played that December. By 1893, the YMCA’s national networks had spread the game to other cities.

Naismith lived to see the creation of the NCAA Basketball Championship, but died 8 months later, on November 28, 1939. In 1959, efforts began to establish a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The museum’s advocates struggled to generate the funding required to secure a physical location. To help promote the effort, on November 6, 1961, Springfield’s YMCA International Training School, since 1954 known as Springfield College, hosted a Basketball Commemoration Day in honor of Naismith and the sport’s 70-year anniversary. The museum was able to open its doors at Springfield College in February 1968, and the future internet gained a new fake holiday; Basketball Day.

This December, 1914 negative document’s the Pennsylvania Railroad’s apprentice baseball team. Local YMCA chapters had spread the sport to the state by the early 1894 and the company formed teams through its own department of the YMCA in 1895, playing their second match in Philadelphia in March of that year. The image is part of Hagley Library’s Pennsylvania Railroad negative collection (Accession 1993.300). You can view more material from this collection online in our Digital Archive by clicking here.

[nemfrog]

Swim class. Springfield College (Mass.) students canoeing and boating on Massasoit Lake. Before 1920.  Hand-colored lantern slide. 

[dunn-and-phillips]

[wrestlingisbest]

(via Geoffrey Riccio on Instagram: “NCAA Qualifier Zach Joseph @scpride_wrestle Photo by @geoffriccio #photographer 📸📸 #wrestling #photography #ncaawrestling…”)

[tjkl895]

Springfield College wrestling (https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:p841c6750)