In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith,[1] a Canadian physical education professor from McGill University of Montréal and instructor at YMCA Training School[2] (today, Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied and at proper levels of fitness during the long New England winters. After rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom, and balls had to be retrieved manually after each "basket" or point scored; this proved inefficient, however, so a hole was drilled into the bottom of the basket, allowing the balls to be poked out with a long dowel each time. The peach baskets were used until 1906 when they were finally replaced by metal hoops with backboards. A further change was soon made, so the ball merely passed through, paving the way for the game we know today. A soccer ball was used to shoot goals. Whenever a person got the ball in the basket, his team would gain a point. Whichever team got the most points won the game.[3]
Naismith's handwritten diaries, discovered by his granddaughter in early 2006, indicate that he was nervous about the new game he had invented, which incorporated rules from a children's game called "Duck on a Rock", as many had failed before it. Naismith called the new game 'Basket Ball'.[4]
The first official game was played in the YMCA gymnasium on January 20, 1892 with nine players and the game ended at 1-0 and the shot was made from 25 feet (7.6 m), on a court just half the size of a present-day Streetball or National Basketball Association (NBA) court. "Basket ball", the name suggested by one of Naismith's students, was popular from the beginning. By 1897-1898 teams of five became standard.
Women's basketball began in 1892 at Smith College when...