YMCA, U.S. Army Spread Development
It was the YMCA that had a major role in spreading basketball throughout the United States and Canada, and throughout the world. In 1893, Mel Rideout arranged the first European match in Paris, in Montmartre. At the same time, Bob Gailey went to Tientsin, China (1894), Duncan Patton to India, Genzabaro Ishikawa to Japan, and C. Hareek to Persia.
The First World War broke out in 1914, and the U.S. Army started fighting in Europe in 1917. During World War I, American Expeditionary Force brought basketball wherever they went. Together with the troops, there were hundreds of physical education teachers, who knew basketball quite well, and even James Naismith spent two years with YMCA in France, in that period. Not only did they bring basketball with them, but even the “modern” basketball, that is the game as it was played in the United States at that time.
Read more about this topic: History Of Basketball
Famous quotes containing the words army, spread and/or development:
“Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easily born; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Creativity seems to emerge from multiple experiences, coupled with a well-supported development of personal resources, including a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (20th century)