Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
the history of basketball essay
the influence of sports on society
short history of basketball
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: the history of basketball essay
The Boys from Joes The town of Joes, Colorado was founded in 1906. Just about everyone in the town had someone in their family with name of Joe, and that’s how the town got its name. The Boys from Joes is an incredible story. It’s about a group of ten small town boys who weren’t expected to go anywhere in basketball, or achieve their goals. Joes High School’s total enrollment consisted of sixteen girls, and twenty boys. Ten of the boys that had enrolled there played basketball. All of the boys were over six feet tall. Lane Sullivan, the new coach of the basketball team, had never even touched a basketball before he started coaching. Sullivan had never coached anything at all before he started coaching the Joes basketball team. In order to gain knowledge about the sport, he got a book about it. He started coaching in 1927, but before the 1928 basketball season, Joes High School didn’t even have a gym. Instead, they’d practice outside on a dirt court, and two times a week they’d take a bus to the nearest gym, which was ten miles away. In order to play home games, the boys had to play in the local dance hall. The “court” was nowhere near regulation size, and the ceiling was so short that the boys couldn’t shoot an arched shot. The people who attended these basketball games had no place to sit and watch the game, the all stood around the edges of the court and on the small stage. Joes High School finally got their own gym around Christmas time because the people of Joes donated their time and material in order to make it happen. The Joes Basketball team of 1927-1928 wasn’t just your average basketball team. They finished their actual basketball season with a record of nineteen wins, five losses, and one tie. The boys won their con... ... middle of paper ... ...ous. They didn’t even make any money off of their talent. The Great Depression occurred shortly after the Joes basketball epidemic, and people say it was a little bit easier to take than it was in other areas. The Joes basketball championships led to other state championships in baseball, track and field, band, and debate. One of the boys from Joes became a very successful man. Some of the others stayed in Joes and went on with their lives. A few others moved to places including Denver, San Francisco, and plenty of other places. Their coach, Lane Sullivan finally wrote a book, which was the primary reason he took the job at Joes in the first place. He thought it would be quiet enough for him to focus on writing. The Boys from Joes is such an incredible story. These boys went from not even having their own gym, to becoming undefeated and winning State Championships.
There have been many historical moments with the University of Dayton Flyers Men’s Basketball team, but Mark Weaver recalls of the one that meant most to him. It took place on March 24, 1967, in Louisville’s Freedom Hall for the Final Four of the NCAA (National College Athletic Association) tournament against the highly favored North Carolina Tar Heels (Collett 228). This was the third straight NCAA tournament appearance for the Flyers, but their first ever Final Four (Collett 228). It turned out that the Flyers smashed North Carolina, seventy-six to sixty-two. Don May hit a record thirteen straight field goals and scored thirty-four points (Collett 228). Mark Weaver, a lifetime fan said, “I remember that game like it was yesterday, it almost brings tears to my eyes. I have never seen UD party like we did the night of that game. I have been following Dayton basketball since the mid-1960s and I have yet to witness the team getting a greater win than the one over the Tar Heels.”
In the book “The Boys of Winter” by Wayne Coffey, shows the struggle of picking the twenty men to go to Lake Placid to play in the 1980 Olympics and compete for the gold medal. Throughout this book Wayne Coffey talks about three many points. The draft and training, the importance of the semi-final game, and the celebration of the gold medal by the support the team got when they got home.
“Shoeless” Joe's early start in baseball came about specifically as a result of his poor family's need for money, and would prove to work to his advantage in his latter years. Joe Jackson's rise to fame in the field of baseball began in 1900, when his mother arranged for him to play baseball on Saturdays for the price of two dollars and fifty cents, at the age of thirteen. As he progressed in the sport, “Shoeless” Joe went in search of better contracts from other mill baseball teams, who would offer him higher wages than the cur...
Coffey, Wayne R. The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team. New York: Crown, 2005. Print.
In the book, the authors detail the lives of the players and those around them. The impact of being away from family also takes center stage, from dealing with the death of parents and siblings to coping with changes in family dynamics. The game of basketball also helped the girls get away from the Indian Wars and the Dawes Act that had occurred before the boarding school was founded. For many of the girls, basketball was a grounding force that continued to foster an important sisterhood among team members.
The gym is full of people; the stands are so full that they overflow onto the edge of the court and out the doorway. The shrieks and screeches cry out from the crowd’s cheers. The ball crashes through the net, as they jump popcorn flies. The home team hit a three-point shot; they are winning with only a few seconds left. In these few seconds, the coach looks around. He realizes why he does what he does. At this point, none of the labor, time, and effort matters. The only thing that matters is the win, seeing his team succeed; watching a team grow is unlike any other feeling. In order to understand that feeling, one first has to appreciate the game: the rules and regulations, the legends that have played and coached, the development of the game,
Fresno, California Easterby Elementary School , recess time, and the day of “The Kickball War”. The time was a quarter till noon, teacher still teaching, as every student begins to pace their feet up and down from sitting in their seats with such excitement. As I stared straight at the clock waiting too see the long hand line up within the short hand to strike 12:00pm, Tj tap my shoulder pointing out the window nodding his head while leaning toward the basket with all the sports and recess equipment. I knew for a fact what that meant, so I occasionally gave him a huge smile and nodded my head back at him, while slowly moving my lips to say the words “Kick ball”. Seeing how the time was near to head out, shortly, and without any hesitation Tj tied his shoes to prepare to dash right out the door! I felt my heart racing with such
Two teams are on the court racing for the ball. The gym is suffocatingly hot and, the students are flailing their arms in the air. The game is a mix of basketball and soccer. Gym class has begun. Blue and yellow jerseys fly throughout the gym with tiny sixth graders inhabiting them. The Yellow team scores and a player picks up the ball forcefully, ready to score once more . The Blue team runs across the gym back and forth like birds stuck in a cage. As the Yellow team scores the heads of the discouraged Blue team hang in disappointment. . The Perspiration is scattered on the bodies of the lively children. The Yellow team begins running for the ball and now looks like a pack of wild animals hunting their prey. They run fiercely towards their victims, each one aiding the next to achieve one goal, to kill. Wisst the sound of the whistle halts the game. Water drips from the water fountain onto the floor . The thirsty children flee the gym. Halftime
Everyone wants to get better at something, but some want it more than others. In “How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium”, the narrator wants to get better at basketball, so he wakes up everyday at 4:30 to go with his dad to his work. Everyday, the narrator would wait 3 hours in his dad’s car until the gym opened, only to sit on the bench and watch the other men play basketball. Finally, one of the best players, Dante, tells the narrator he can play but he’ll get “smoked”. However, the narrator proved him wrong. The narrator learns that if you persevere, work hard, and have confidence, your dreams may come true. In How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court into a Place
Basketball is a sport that is capable of changing one’s life. This is evident in the story, ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian’ created by Sherman Alexie. The story is told through the eyes of Arnold Spirit Jr., an Indian attending Reardan, a white high school while living on the Spokane Indian reserve. Both sides do not take such a choice lightly, but this all changes when Arnold makes the Reardan varsity basketball team. With basketball, Arnold is no longer shunned for his choices. Basketball is a sport he can play freely, without the constant fear of consequences. Basketball is important to Arnold because it shows him the power of expectation, allows him to build healthy relationships and shows him the impact of support.
So, with my birth in 1979 in a small town in Kansas, this was the world I stepped into. Naismith, Chamberlain, Winter, and others had been incorporated into a basketball pantheon by the public. They were part of the public consciousness, but only in a supporting role. The game of basketball itself was lifted above them all, the true source of the passion. Before I was ten years old I had seen this passion at its peak. The NCAA Tournament of 1988 turned out to be a great showcase of Kansas and Big 8 basketball. The team I loved, KSU, made an improbable run in the tournament, winning their first three games. This set up a Sunflower State showdown between KSU and KU in the round of eight. The game ended up being a blowout, with KU dominating. KU went on to win the national championship in exciting fashion, beating Big 8 rivals Oklahoma in an exciting championship game. As an impressionable eight-year-old, I soaked up the emotions. The hopes and expectations, the ecstasy and the heartbreak. These feelings stuck with me.
It was the middle of November, 7 p.m. and very chilly outside. The team was walking into the court. “The basketball court looked and felt brand new. It smelled like it was just built and ready to be played on,” Rashim excitedly explained. It was Rashim’s first game of the regular season against Wissahickon High School. Usually Rashim doesn't care about the regular season, but he found out that this could be the most important game of his life. 76ers recruiter, Matthew McLane, came to watch the game to find an incoming star to bring to the NBA. Rashim knew it was his chance to show how he is good enough for the NBA, but he was very nervous. The game
On November 6, 1861 the great James Naismith was born in Ontario, Canada to Mr. and Mrs. John and Margaret Naismith. As a child James wasn’t very successful in school but excelled in physical activates, this triggered him to drop out of school and become a lumberjack. Soon after this he realized that he needed to turn his life around, so he went back to school to receive a degree in physical education. He later earned a job at a local YMCA in Springfield and was immediately put in task of finding a way to keep men in shape during the winter seasons. After many unsuccessful attempts he finally decided on a sport in which the players must throw a soccer ball into a peach basket on either side of the gymnasium. So on December 21, 1891 the newly formed game known as basketball had its first official game, the final score 1-0. As time passed different basketball leagues were formed the Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Canada. In 1949 the BAA joined another basketball league, the NBL, to create the currant league, the NBA. The NBA was a great success with many people. This success would led it to what it is today, a multi-billion dollar association known for consisting in a wide variety of elite athletes.
The sport basketball was created in 1981 and has grown to be one of the most popular sports to be played worldwide. To think that this life altering activity was thought of by only one man, Dr. James Naismith, a Physical Instructor at the YMCA Training school. Which was in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith was under the instructions of the head physical education board when he had the brilliant idea. He was given an enduring two weeks to come up with an indoor game that would give an “athletic distraction” for a jumpy class to participate in through the harsh winter approaching them. All he had was his own mind and a small indoor space to some how create a new game to be played. Naismith succeeded and his creation is now a big time sport played by millions all around the world.
Junior Battle was the best player on the team and led them in scoring and rebounds. However, he struggled off the court and failed to get his schoolwork done. Junior’s struggles with his schoolwork caused problems between him and his coach. Nevertheless this problem was quickly resolved due to his mother, Ms. Willow Battle, love and compassion for her son. Ms. Battle pleaded with the coach to keep Junior on the team so she would not lose her second son to the streets.