Why Balls Are Used in a Wide Variety of Sports

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1. Background

Games nowadays are mainly for relaxation and pleasure. Most of us play football, basketball, tennis, golf, and so forth. Have you, nonetheless, ever thought about one interesting phenomenon in sports which is ball is always used to play? People invented numerous forms to have entertainment with balls. However, what is the reasoning behind this interesting myth?

2. Objectives

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the reasons why both ancients and people nowadays created various kinds of physical activities with balls in two domains, which are historical and social-psychological. A model, hopefully, can be suggested after the investigation.

3. Method

To acquire reliable and professional information and data, two books were deeply analysed and two face-to-face interviews were conducted with a sports psychology professional, Professor Cindy Hui-Ping SIT and a Hong Kong Football Youth Team (U18) member, Mr. A (pseudonym).

The mentioned books are The Ball: Discovering the Object of the Game by John Fox and Ball, Bat and Bishop: THE ORIGIN OF BALL GAMES by Robert W Henderson.

Open questions and personal expressions were mainly involved in the interviews. Questions asked are shown in the appendix.

4. Results and Analysis

4.1. Historical support

With regard to the historical reasons of origin of ball, it is more suggestive than conclusive. (Henderson, 1947) The origin of ball games actually puzzled scholars because there are plentiful tales about how balls were conceived.

(i) Ancient Rituals

Some historians interpreted balls as the head of Osiris, while some thought it was a symbol of the sun. They are, indeed, believable deductions supported by evidences and ancient cultures.

First an...

... middle of paper ...

...histories are events happened a long time ago and they may have deviations. Small sample size is another barrier for the accurate results of this research because the model can be strengthened if there are more interviewees.

Works Cited

Aztec History (2013). Ancient aztec games. Retrieved from http://www.aztec-history.com/ancient-aztec-games.html

Brown, S. (n.d.). Balls - playing with balls. Retrieved from http://babyparenting.about.com/od/activitiesandplay/qt/toddlertoyballs.htm

Fox, J. (2012). The ball: Discovering the object of the game. New York: Harper Perennial.

Henderson, R. W. (2001). Ball, bat, and bishop: The origin of ball games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

The Oxford Dictionaries (2014). Ball: definition of ball in Oxford dictionary (British & World English). Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ball

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