Indoor Netball

In 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts a 30-year-old Canadian immigrant to the USA, James Naismith, was ordered to invent an indoor game for young men at the School for Christian Workers (later the YMCA).

Most games tried ended with injury rates of staggering proportions! So Naismith conjured up a game whereby a ball had to be lobbed into a high peach basket (his reasoning being that if a ball had to dropped into the "goal", it couldn't be thrown at breakneck speed). Basketball was born.

The original game featuring nine players - three forwards, three centres and three guards - simply because Naismith had 18 youths to keep amused. Women's indoor basketball began exactly two days later when female teachers to the gym were captivated by the game but it wasn't until 1895 that the current game of netball was well and truly shaped.

When Clara Baer, a sports teacher in New Orleans, wrote to Naismith asking for a copy of the rules, the subsequent rules package contained a drawing of the court with lines pencilled across it, simply to show the areas various players could best patrol. But Baer misinterpreted the lines and thought players couldn't leave those areas! Her mistake was ratified into the rules of women's basketball as zones. Netball was first played in England in 1895 at Madame Ostenburg's College. In the first half of the 20th century, Netball's popularity continued to grow, with the game being played in many British Commonwealth countries.

There were no standard rules at that time with both nine-a-side and five-a-side versions of the game. Women adapted the sport by dividing the court into thirds and introducing a rule that the ball must be caught or touched at least once in each third. No-one was allowed to run with the ball and they established restricted playing areas for each position.

They got rid of the back board and modified the goal ring to suit the smaller sized soccer ball and created "Netball".

Today the game is the most popular women's sport in Australia with an estimated 1 million players nation wide.

Although traditionally identified as a sport for women, there is no reason why it cannot be played with mixed teams, and increasingly more boys and men are joining to play.

source: http://www.netball.asn.au