Two of the most-played indoor team sports in the world were invented in the Pioneer Valley, four years and eight miles apart, both at YMCA training programs. The story is unusually well documented for inventions that old, and you can stand in the rooms (or close enough) where each one happened, between lunch and dinner, in a single afternoon.
Morning: Basketball, Springfield
Park near the Connecticut River waterfront in downtown Springfield and start at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a 30-year-old Canadian physical-education instructor at what was then the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College), nailed two peach baskets to the gymnasium balcony, wrote thirteen rules on a piece of paper, and asked his class to play. The Hall of Fame, four blocks south of the original gymnasium, is the world’s basketball museum: three floors of exhibits and a full-size court at the center where you can take a few shots with a piece of museum equipment in your hand.
Plan on two to three hours.
Lunch: Springfield
A short drive or walk back into downtown puts you in lunch range. A few options at different price points:
- The Student Prince (The Fort) on Fort Street, a German- American institution that has been doing schnitzel and lager since 1935 and is the local choice nine times out of ten.
- The cafe inside the Springfield Museums Quadrangle, which is fine and convenient if you also want to see the museum block.
- MGM Springfield has several sit-down options if you prefer a larger, more recent setting.
Afternoon: Volleyball, Holyoke
Drive eight miles north on I-91 to Holyoke. The International Volleyball Hall of Fame sits in a converted nineteenth-century mill warehouse on Holyoke Heritage State Park, along the second level of the canal system that powered the city in its industrial heyday.
Volleyball was invented at the Holyoke YMCA in 1895 by William G. Morgan, who had trained under Naismith at the Springfield school four years earlier and wanted a less-strenuous alternative for older men. Morgan’s first version of the game used the inner bladder of a basketball; the modern volleyball was specified to his order by Spalding the following year. The hall is one room: a regulation indoor court at the center, induction panels around it, a small museum of memorabilia, and a tight international focus that reflects volleyball’s much wider modern global footprint.
Plan on one to two hours.
Why both happened here
The YMCA-school context is the link. Late-nineteenth-century American YMCAs were running large physical-education programs for young men in industrial cities, and the Springfield International Training School in particular was the hub of professional phys-ed teaching in the country. Two instructors there, four years apart, designed two indoor team games for situations where existing sports didn’t fit: a New England winter, in Naismith’s case; a roomful of older men in Morgan’s. The Connecticut River valley wasn’t incidental to either decision: this was where the training school happened to be.
If you have an evening
- Forest Park in Springfield (free admission to the grounds and the Dr. Seuss-themed historic landscape) is a 10-minute drive south of the basketball hall.
- A Springfield Symphony concert at Symphony Hall in Court Square runs many Saturday evenings.
- The Springfield Armory National Historic Site (also free) closes at 5pm and would be a good morning add-on for a more substantial day.