This Used To Be a Thing: Newcomb Ball
Before Volleyball was Volleyball…
It is technically true that Newcomb Ball isn’t really a thing anymore. But in a slightly modified (and possibly plagiarized) version, it still very much is. To the point where professional leagues have recently sprung up due to its increasing popularity.
Clara Gregory Baer was a pioneer in the development of physical education curricula designed specifically for women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
She was encouraged to take up physical activity to combat her ill health as a child, which instilled a lifelong belief that women should also be encouraged to participate in games and sport for their overall well-being.
In 1893, while working at the Southern Athletic Club in New Orleans, a males-only club who had only recently opened their facilities a few hours a week to female relatives of members, Baer approached Sophie Newcomb College (now a part of Tulane University) in New Orleans, and convinced its President to establish a women’s curriculum for physical education.
Baer was also notable for publishing the first-ever rules guide for women’s basketball. While waiting for the hoops to arrive at Newcomb College, she wanted to develop some sort of activity that not only provided physical exercise for her students, but improved ball-handling skills once basketball could start.
So she invented a sport — Newcomb Ball.
Baer divided players into two teams who faced each other on opposite sides of a court. One team would throw a ball into the other team’s side, with the objective of it landing on the court before someone could catch it.
If the other team did catch the ball, they would throw it back with the same objective. This continued until the ball finally hit the floor. The team who threw the ball would then get a point.
Is this starting to sound at all familiar?
In 1895, two years later, William Morgan, a YMCA director from Massachusetts, is credited with “inventing” the game of volleyball.
Volleyball has two teams facing each other on a court. A ball goes back and forth between the two teams until it finally hits the floor, when a point is awarded.
The difference? Instead of throwing and catching the ball, it is struck (or “volleyed”) from one side of the court to the other.
Volleyball, of course, is probably more popular today than it’s ever been. Exhibit A — the University of Nebraska.
Nebraska’s women’s volleyball program consistently sells out more frequently than their men’s basketball team. And, in 2023, they not only set a US attendance record for a single game (92,003, at their football stadium), it still stands today as the largest attendance for any single women’s sporting event on the entire planet.
But I digress.
The question of whether Morgan actually knew of Newcomb Ball and just “borrowed” the basic structure for his game of volleyball may never be answered. Baer never publicly called Morgan out or otherwise complained about his game. But it is hard to imagine Morgan was not at least aware of it, if not familiar with it.
Baer had a two-year head-start, of course. And she did present a demonstration of the game to a convention of which Morgan was a member. But whether he actually attended in unknown.
So why has Newcomb Ball been mostly forgotten while volleyball has thrived?
Most likely, it’s due in no small part to (mostly male) historians who, over time, have determined which historical events are significant, and which aren’t. Newcomb Ball was invented by a woman, for women, who before then had relatively few outlets for physical activity.
Volleyball was (seemingly) invented my a man for men. Though, like Newcomb Ball, it was specifically targeted toward people (businessmen, in this case) who needed an outlet for physical activity as jobs were becoming more and more sedentary due to industrialization.
Since it was far more culturally acceptable for men to play sports (see football, baseball, basketball, cricket) than women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Morgan probably had a much easier time gaining popular acceptance.
Although Newcomb Ball stuck around for a time, it was mostly considered a youth or recreational club game and never really got a foot-hold as an official competitive sport. Baer enjoyed a long career at Newcomb, promoted to a full professor in 1899 and ultimately retiring in 1929. She died in 1938 at the age of 74.
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