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:
“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“All catches alight
At the spread of spring:
Birds crazed with flight
Branches that fling
Leaves up to the light”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)