A New Game.

In the fall of 1891 Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick, the director of physical education at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, asked one of his instructors, James Naismith, to develop a new indoor game to replace the gymnastics and calisthenics routinely practiced during the winter months. After studying the attributes of lacrosse, football, rugby, and soccer, Naismith created a game in which players would bounce and pass a soccer ball from one teammate to another and score points by tossing the ball into a suspended goal. The concept for the game came to him from watching rugby players spending the winter months throwing rugby balls into boxes. Since he did not have boxes to use for goals, he obtained two peach baskets and hung them from the railing around the YMCA gymnasium, ten feet above the floor. In...