Unit 1 · Play Has Kinds

Olympia is a place in Greece. Games were held there long ago. The traditional date for the first games is 776 BCE. They came every four years.

A main race was one length of the stadium. The stadium was a long, straight dirt track. People sat on grassy banks beside it to watch.

People in Mexico and Central America played a ball game long ago. It began more than 3,000 years ago. The ball was made of rubber from trees.

Players needed a special place. They built a ball court of stone. It was a long, narrow alley. High walls stood on both sides. The largest one is at Chichén Itzá in Mexico.

In 1863, clubs in London met at a tavern. They wrote shared rules for a kicking game. They named their group the Football Association.

Their game is called soccer in the United States. It is played on a pitch. A pitch is a long rectangle of grass or turf. A goal stands at each end.

James Naismith taught at a school in Springfield, Massachusetts. In December 1891, winter kept his class inside. The students were bored and restless.

Naismith needed a game that fit a gym. He nailed two peach baskets to the balcony. Players tossed a soccer ball at them. That game became basketball.

A modern running track is an oval. It has painted lanes. Each runner stays in one lane. Lanes keep runners from bumping.

One lap in the inside lane is 400 meters. World Athletics sets that size. Tracks around the world match it. So a time in one town can be compared with another.

Swimmers race in a pool. A pool is a tank of water with walls. Its length is measured. Swimmers touch the wall at each end.

Many school pools in the United States are 25 yards long. The Olympic Games use a longer pool. It is 50 meters from wall to wall.

Hockey is played on ice. People once played on frozen ponds. In 1875, a game was played indoors in Montreal, Canada. It was at the Victoria Skating Rink.

A rink is a floor of ice with walls around it. Today a National Hockey League rink is 200 feet long. It is 85 feet wide. The corners are curved.

A soccer match has a referee. The rule book for soccer is the Laws of the Game. Law 5 says the referee starts and stops play.

The referee uses a whistle. Its sharp sound carries across a big field. Every player hears the same signal at once. Fans hear it too.

A race begins at a starting line. Every runner waits behind it. That way no one starts closer to the finish.

Runners must wait for the start signal. Leaving too soon is a false start. Under World Athletics rules, a false start can remove a runner from the race.

Law 3 of the Laws of the Game is about players. It says a team has up to eleven players on the pitch. One of the eleven is the goalkeeper.

Other players wait at the side. They are substitutes. A substitute may come on when the referee allows it. Then a player on the pitch comes off.

Naismith’s first class had eighteen students. So his first game used nine players on each team. That was in December 1891.

Nine players crowded the small gym. Within a few years, rule makers chose five a side. Today five players per team are on the court.

Before the first game, Naismith wrote his rules. There were thirteen. He pinned them on a board in the gym. Every player could read them.

In January 1892, the rules were printed. They appeared in the school paper, The Triangle. Soon other schools could play the same game.

A fair game uses one set of rules for both sides. Both soccer teams follow the same Laws of the Game. Both have eleven players.

In 1886, four British football groups formed the IFAB. It still guards the Laws of the Game. So a match in Brazil uses the same laws as one in Chicago.

In 1900, Illinois schools formed the Illinois High School Association. People call it the IHSA. It helps schools across the state follow shared rules.

The IHSA runs state contests. The first boys wrestling state champions were crowned in 1937. Girls wrestling had its first state finals in 2022.