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Jul 28, 2022 · This article will look at five major American sports through history and how each has evolved. Read on, and we’ll cover: 1. The early days of sports in the United States. 2. Baseball takes off and becomes a national pastime. 3. Football gains popularity in the 20th century. 4. Basketball comes into its own in the 1960s. 5.
The history of sports in the United States reveals that American football, baseball, softball, and indoor soccer evolved from older British sports— rugby football, British baseball, rounders, and association football, respectively.
- Basketball
- Football
- Baseball
- Lacrosse
- Figure Skating
- Hockey
- Golf
Basketball is the only major American sport with a clearly identifiable inventor. James Naismith wrote the sport’s original 13 rules as part of a December 1891 class assignment at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) training school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Born and educated in Canada, Naismith came south to pursue his interests in phys...
Closely related to two ancient English sports—rugby and soccer (or association football)—American football originated at universities in North America, primarily the United States, in the late 19th century. The man most responsible for the transition from the earlier rugby-like game to the sport of football we know today was Walter Camp, a.k.a. the...
References to games resembling baseball in the United States date back to the 18th century. Like football, its most direct ancestors appear to be two English games: rounders (a children’s game brought to New England by the colonists) and cricket. In September 1845, a group of New York City men founded the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. One o...
Lacrosse, America's oldest team sport, dates to 1100 A.D., when it was played by the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois people, in what now is New York and areas in Canada bordering the state. The early versions of lacrosse matches played by Native American nations included hundreds of men and used wooden sticks, sometimes with net baskets or pockets attac...
The earliest evidence of ice skating dates to approximately 3,000 B.C., when inhabitants of Scandinavia and Russia filed and fashioned the shin bones of large animals such as horses, deer and sheep into skates for wintertime travel on frozen lakes and waterways. The technical discipline of figure skating developed in 18th-century Britain as people ...
The origins of ice hockey date to stick-and-ball games played during the Middle Ages or even ancient Greece and Egypt. Versions of the game evolved in 18th-century Europe and soon spread to Canada and the United States. The first organized ice hockey game, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation, was played on March 3, 1875, between tw...
Versions of golf were known to have been played in Scotland at least as early as the 15th century—one was played over large pieces of property and the other in the streets of villages and towns. In 1744, the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers wrote down the first rules of the game, known as the Thirteen Articles, for their tournament at the Lei...
See also the timeline of sport firsts and a brief history of sports. See results and analysis of sports in 2024. See results and analysis of sports in 2023. The year's highlights included Winter Olympics in Beijing, the FIFA World Cup. See results and analysis of sports in 2022.
- Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier. 200 of 200. April 15th, 1947; Ebbets field; 26,623 spectators; A world of doubt. The most epic 0-for game in MLB history, but Robinson would go on to do much, much more for the world of sports and for equality in the human race.
- 1st Televised Sporting Event. 199 of 200. The 1936 Jesse Owens Olympics was the world's first televised sporting event, but the United States quickly jumped on the bandwagon in May of 1939.
- Magic Johnson Announces He's HIV-Positive. 198 of 200. After the announcement on Nov. 7th, 1991, Johnson became a torchbearer for the movement and was labeled a hero for doing so.
- Jesse Owens Defeats Hitler's Utopia. 197 of 200. With gold medals in the 100 and 200-meter sprints, the long jump and the relay team, Jesse Owens became the most successful athlete at the '36 Games.
A good place to start studying the history of professional team sports are published collections of primary sources, beginning with four edited volumes of the series Sports in America: A Documentary History, including George B. Kirsch’s Sports in War, Revival and Expansion 1860–1880; Gerald R. Gems’s Sports Organized, 1880–1900; Steven ...
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PHC hosts a number of intramural tournaments each year from basketball to tennis. Outside of organized tournaments, we are also equipped to offer the space and equipment for pickup games in sports such as racquetball, volleyball, and wallyball.
