Volleyball facts: origins, rules and numbers you did not know

Volleyball was born in 1895 in the United States, it was not called volleyball, and for its first few decades it was played with almost none of the rules we know today. Below you will find the most concrete facts about this sport: origins, rules, measurements and technical details that change the way you watch a match.

The origins: it was called Mintonette

The inventor is William G. Morgan, a physical education instructor at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In 1895 he was looking for a game less violent than basketball - born a few years earlier in the same area - for adult men who wanted to train without physical contact.

He called it Mintonette, after badminton. The name changed almost immediately: during a demonstration, an observer noticed that the action consisted of sending the ball back on the fly (to volley) and suggested calling it volleyball. The name stuck.

When it became an Olympic sport

Indoor volleyball entered the Olympic Games at Tokyo 1964, in both the men's and women's tournaments. It is one of the few disciplines that came in with both tournaments right away.

Beach volleyball is much more recent: it became an Olympic sport at Atlanta 1996, after being born on Californian beaches in the 1920s and exploding as a professional tour in the 1980s.

There is also a Paralympic version: sitting volleyball, played seated on a smaller court with a lower net, where contact between your hips and the floor is compulsory while playing the ball.

The 25-point set is a recent invention

Until the end of the 1990s the game was played with side-out scoring: you could only score a point when you were serving. Matches lasted an unpredictable amount of time, a nightmare for live TV.

In 1998 the FIVB adopted the rally point system: every rally awards a point, whoever is serving. Sets went to 25 points (with a two-point margin) and the tie-break to 15. That is the change that made modern volleyball what you see on TV.

Another huge novelty arrives around the same time: the libero, the player in a different coloured shirt who specialises in defence and reception. They can come on and off freely in place of a back-row player, but they cannot attack the ball when it is entirely above the top of the net. The role has existed for a little over twenty years: before 1998 it simply did not exist.

The measurements almost nobody remembers

• Indoor court: 18 metres by 9. Split into two 9x9 halves.
• Beach volleyball court: 16 metres by 8, so noticeably smaller - and covered by two players instead of six.
• Net height: 2.43 m for men, 2.24 m for women. Same measurement in beach volleyball.
• The 3-metre line: it marks the attack zone. A back-row player cannot attack from inside this area with the ball above the net: they have to take off from behind it.
• Beach sets: to 21 points, with a possible third set to 15.

Technical details that change the match

The block does not count as a touch

If the ball touches the hands of whoever jumps at the block, that contact does not count towards the three touches you have. The blocking team still has three full touches to play the ball. That is why a touched block is almost never a lost situation.

The first touch can be "double"

On a team's first touch, successive contacts with different parts of the body in one single action are allowed. That is why you see impossible digs bouncing off arms and chest without the referee blowing.

The serve can touch the tape

A serve that clips the net and lands in the opponents' court is good. It was not always like this: until 2000 it was a fault, and the point was replayed.

In beach volleyball, setting the ball over is judged very strictly

Sending the ball to the other side with a set requires the trajectory to be perpendicular to your shoulder line. That is why you see players turning their whole body before putting a ball over the net.

Italy, in these years, is a serious case

The women's national team won Olympic gold at Paris 2024 and the 2025 World Championship, beating Turkey in a tie-break final. They are the two biggest results in the history of Italian women's volleyball, one year apart.

Worth remembering when people talk about volleyball as a niche sport: in Italy it is one of the most played team sports, with a huge base of registered players at youth level.

One fact that concerns you: how high you actually jump

In modern volleyball the jump separates levels more than almost anything else. And yet most amateur athletes have no idea how high they jump in centimetres: they guess, or they compare their hand with the net tape.

On the site you will find a free jump test: you upload a two-second video of yourself jumping, and the system works out the height from your flight time. The video never leaves your device. In a minute you have a real number to start from.

The JHP programmes for volleyball

If after the test you want to work on it:

• Jump Higher Program - 10 weeks of jump work with bodyweight only, €60. It is the starting point if you have no equipment.
• Spike Revolution - 16 weeks dedicated to spiking, €60.
• Volley In-Season Workout - 16 weeks across pre-season and season, €90.
• Volley Advanced - the complete volleyball package, €90.
• All the programmes are listed on the JHP courses page.

Or the JHP membership: €99 a year for all 13 programmes, WhatsApp support, cancel whenever you want.

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