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:
“To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder.... The Army functions best when you’re frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I’m no angel, but I’ve spread my wings a bit.”
—Wesley Ruggles, U.S. screenwriter. Tira (Mae West)
“Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)