Editing YMCA (section)

==== Basketball ====
{{Further|History of basketball}}

In 1891, [[basketball]] was invented at the YMCA in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]], by [[James Naismith]], a clergyman, educator, and physician.<ref>{{cite web |last=Smith |first=Daniel |date=30 January 2018 |title=History Lesson: Early basketball at YMCA |url=https://eu.courierpress.com/story/life/2018/01/30/history-lesson-early-basketball-ymca/1077521001/ |access-date=2 January 2018 |website=Courier & Press}}</ref> Naismith was asked to create an indoor "athletic distraction" to keep rowdy youth busy in the cold [[New England]] winter months. [[Luther Gulick (physician)]], the head of Springfield YMCA gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy a particularly incorrigible group. Naismith decided the game had to be physically active, simple to understand and would have minimal physical roughness.

The first contest was played at the International YMCA Training School in December 1891.<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |title=How The YMCA Helped Shape America |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/06/02/410532977/how-the-ymca-helped-shape-america |access-date=2020-04-16 |newspaper=NPR |date=2 June 2015 |language=en|last1=Weeks |first1=Linton }}</ref> During those earliest games the school's custodian, "whose antipathy to the students was well known," retrieved successful shots from the baskets – using a ladder.<ref name=":5">{{cite journal |date=7 February 1931 |title=Article |journal=The Statesman of Salem, Oregon}}</ref> The original game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to the balcony of Springfield YMCA. The game was an immediate hit, although originally the baskets still had their bottoms, and the ball had to be manually retrieved after each score, considerably slowing play. It was mostly a passing game, and dribbling did not become a major part of the game until much later, when the ball was improved to its present form.

Gulick worked with Naismith to spread the sport, chairing the Basketball Committee of the [[Amateur Athletic Union]] (1895–1905) and representing the [[United States Olympic Committee]] during the [[1908 Olympic Games]]. Naismith and his wife attended the [[1936 Summer Olympics]] when basketball was included for the first time as an Olympic event.<ref>{{cite book |last=Loucky, Wallechinsky |first=David and Jamie |title=The Complete Book of the Olympics |publisher=Aurum Press Limited |year=2008 |location=London |pages=399–400}}</ref> For his efforts to increase the popularity of basketball and of [[physical fitness]] in general, Gulick was inducted into the [[Basketball Hall of Fame]] as a contributor in 1959.