It seems unbelievable in terms of the possibility that three world-famous sports such as hockey, basketball and American football could be traced back to an unknown university in Montreal, although it is true. Without McGill, three of America’s four favorite sports wouldn’t be, and it’s just an added bonus that there would be nothing without Canada. Additionally, the hockey, basketball, and American football trio were invented within roughly 15 years, which boosts the improbability factor.
But let’s go well in time!
Thanks to Canada for discovering American football
American football merged with the United States only because of its name, and it is historically believed that the first American football match was held on November 6, 1869, with the participation of Princeton and Rutgers University, but the truth is that that match, more accurately. The match rules had little to do with American football.
So much so that they played by the Football Rules 1869, you can only kick the ball, throw it or run with it – all of this was because they played at Rutgers anyway so tell me what rules you have to match.
So the first official American football game was nothing more than a loosely organized game of football.
It took five years for the first regular American football game, and at that point McGill got a message to Harvard (injured by what they thought was American football) by Princeton and Rutgers to challenge them to a soccer match, but since they couldn’t agree on the rules, they finally decided. Two games were held in a row, one at Harvard and the other at McGill.
500 people exchanged tickets for the double confrontation on May 13-14, 1874, and could see that on the first day they defeated Harvard McGill smoothly, 3-0, with slightly modified football rules (then called the Boston Game). This): There were 25 people on the field for each team, the ball ball could basically be kicked here as well, but it was actually allowed to be picked up by hand, and if the ball was stopped in the player’s way, they could throw or kick it. The rules were so baffling, it’s no wonder the sport didn’t even carry on like this.
Photo: McGill University
The next day came McGill rules and the ball:
A swollen egg-shaped piece of leather could be grasped and operated this way, but throwing and kicking were regular as well.
The offensive game was divided into trials, as in today’s American football the game went to tryos (these later became relegations), fights 13-13 players per team. The final score was 0-0 big, but even that was enough to hurt Harvard’s players with the new rules.
Soon after, Harvard had already taught the new version of Yale, then Princeton University came along, and soon after that everyone played American football in this way: By 1876, the sport had also received an official rulebook, which most of the university’s teams had adopted.
Ice + Rugby = Hockey
Less than a year after the Harvard-McGill match, in 1875, an engineer from Montreal and a great rugby fan, James Creighton, discovered the city’s underground ice rink as a great place to keep rugby in good shape with his friends over the winter. in absence.
Creighton and his friends – nearly all of McGill University students, including Creighton – got in on Sunday, paid a skating rink guard, practiced training on March 3 until the full rules were in place, and announced the first hockey game in history on Wednesday. According to an article in a local newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, they thought about everything, and those interested were also informed that instead of bouncing ball, they would play with a flat piece of wood so the disc would not hit anyone while playing. The spectators were swimming a lot, but not everyone was so lucky.
According to various reports, the children got tired of watching the historical hockey match and went up to play ice, when one of them was found on his head, which then caused a very big fight, or the local technical skating team got tired of the somewhat protracted meeting, and the spectators started wrestling, The shinbone, heads and small stools were also fractured, according to reports.
The first game was still being played with nine teams, and it was not possible to move forward due to the rugby past, but within two years, the nine teams had been reduced to seven. Two years later, in 1879, the first hockey team, the McGill Hockey Club, was formed, and in 1892, Governor Lord Frederick Walter Stanley donated the Dominion Cup Challenge, then known as the Stanley Cup, and the National Hockey League was formed in 1909. Which It became the NHL eight years later, and by 1920, hockey was already on the Summer Olympics program.
Two baskets of peaches, a little bad weather, and you’re done
It is a relatively common fact that basketball did not evolve from another sport, but it was invented with great thought, but the circumstances of its birth are no longer well known.
It goes back to 1891, including on December 21st, when Dr. James Naismith from Canada was just working at Springfield Christian Labor School in Massachusetts, USA – the predecessor of the later YMCA. On this day, his boss asked him to come up with something to spend time on a boarding course during the winter, when it is basically impossible to play other sports due to bad weather to link students’ behavior to school.
He was given two weeks to settle in, but it was no coincidence that the mission was approached and he was given such a short notice: Naismith wasn’t a huge room, but he was a particularly powerful and cultured legend. He studied at McGill University in Montreal, where he earned a total of 11 degrees, earned a doctorate as a physician, but also completed his priestly training, and in one year he was voted the university’s best athlete.
It didn’t take long for the idea to somehow pop up from Naismith’s head:
He installed two peach baskets on the wall, gave his pupils a soccer ball, and all he told them was the goal of throwing the ball into the basket. He whistled and the first basketball game began.
The most interesting degree of invention was that a clever man like Naismith had just discovered how to speed up the game at the expense of agony.
Originally, the ball stayed in the basket and he had to climb a ladder to get it out and keep playing.
Naismith’s first development was to drill a small hole in the bottom of the basket through which the ball is ejected from the basket with a beach handle, and it was only later that the net solution was introduced.
Although the first match culminated in a massive brawl – there were several singles, shoulder strokes and frightening ones on the roster – it also contributed to Naismith’s slight tweak to the rules originally formulated. Ultimately, he summed up the essence of the game with 13 points, and since then, basketball has spread like wildfire, thanks to the rules dropped by YMCA magazine.
As a humble man, Naismith never boasted of inventing one of the most popular games in the world, he never asked for money for it, and he even gave it such fame that in his first basketball game at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he officially dumped the ball. Moreover, he did not carry basketball much, as he believed that gymnastics and rugby were a much better educational tool for young people with behavioral problems.