Volleyball, Basketball and Handball: Rules and Facts

The correct answer is B, Dr James Naismith. A Canadian physical instructor at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, he devised the game in 1891 to keep his class occupied indoors during a hard winter, nailed two peach baskets to the gallery railings and wrote thirteen rules, of which the ban on running with the ball survives as the travelling rule. Option A is wrong because William G. Morgan invented volleyball at Holyoke four years later, in 1895, and the two names are the commonest swap in this chapter. Option C is wrong because Walter Camp is remembered as the father of American football, where he introduced the line of scrimmage and the system of downs. Option D is wrong because no such person is associated with the origin of basketball; handball grew out of the work of several Scandinavian and German teachers rather than one inventor.

The correct answer is A, Mintonette. William G. Morgan gave the game that name in 1895 because he had borrowed the net and the light ball from badminton, and only afterwards did a watching professor suggest volleyball, from the volleying of the ball back and forth over the net. Option B is wrong because netball is a separate game, derived from early women's basketball, played seven to a side with a ring that has no backboard. Option C is wrong because pelota is the Basque court game played with a hard ball against a wall, related to jai alai. Option D is wrong because korfball is a mixed Dutch game, invented in the early twentieth century, in which teams of men and women shoot into a basket on a pole without a backboard.

The correct answer is A, 18 metres by 9 metres. The net divides the court into two squares of nine metres by nine metres, and an attack line is drawn three metres back from the centre line, behind which a back-row player must take off when attacking. Option B is wrong because 28 metres by 15 metres is the size of a basketball court under FIBA rules. Option C is wrong because 40 metres by 20 metres is the size of a handball court, the largest of the three indoor games in this group. Option D is wrong because no standard court among these games uses that measurement. The beach form of volleyball is smaller still, 16 metres by 8 metres with two players a side, and that figure is sometimes offered as a distractor.

The correct answer is C, 3.05 metres, which is exactly ten feet. The gallery railing in the Springfield gymnasium from which James Naismith hung his peach baskets in 1891 happened to be ten feet above the floor, and the height has stayed the same ever since for men and women alike. Option A is wrong, but 2.43 metres is worth memorising as the height of the volleyball net for men, the figure examiners most often put beside this one. Option B is wrong because 2.74 metres, or nine feet, is the height of the net in badminton at the posts. Option D is wrong because no team game fixes its target at three and a half metres. Pairing 2.43 metres with volleyball and 3.05 metres with basketball answers a large share of the questions from this chapter.

The correct answer is C, seven, that is six court players and one goalkeeper, with further players available as substitutes. Option A is wrong because five on court is the number in basketball. Option B is wrong because six is the number in volleyball, where the six rotate clockwise each time the right to serve passes to their side. Option D is wrong because eleven a side was the old outdoor form of handball, which was played at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 but died out; the game that survived and returned to the Olympics at Munich in 1972 is the indoor seven-a-side version. Remembering the sequence five for basketball, six for volleyball and seven for handball disposes of every counting question in this group.

The correct answer is B, FIVB, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball, which was founded in 1947 and has its headquarters at Lausanne in Switzerland. It runs the World Championship, the Volleyball Nations League and the beach volleyball circuit. Option A is wrong because FIBA, founded in 1932, is the world body for basketball. Option C is wrong because the IHF, the International Handball Federation, founded in 1946 and based at Basel, governs handball. Option D is wrong because the FIH is the International Hockey Federation, which runs field hockey from Lausanne. All four abbreviations begin with F or I and are set against one another in matching questions, so each should be learnt with both its full form and its year of foundation. A useful memory aid is that the oldest of the three bodies is FIBA of 1932, followed by the IHF of 1946 and the FIVB of 1947, and that all three sit in Switzerland along with the International Olympic Committee at Lausanne.

The correct answer is C, Tokyo in 1964, where both the men's and the women's events were held, the hosts winning the women's gold. Option A is wrong because the Berlin Games of 1936 saw the Olympic debut of men's basketball, with James Naismith himself present, and of the outdoor eleven-a-side form of handball. Option B is wrong because Helsinki in 1952 added no new team game of this group. Option D is wrong because Munich in 1972 is the year to remember for indoor handball, which returned to the programme there after an absence of thirty-six years. Judo and volleyball both entered at Tokyo in 1964, so that pair is also worth keeping in mind for questions on Olympic debuts. The safest way to carry these dates into the hall is as a short list: 1936 for basketball and outdoor handball, 1964 for volleyball, 1972 for indoor handball, 1976 for the women in both basketball and handball, and 1996 for beach volleyball.

The correct answer is B, volleyball. The libero is a defensive specialist introduced to make long rallies possible: the player wears a shirt of a different colour, plays only in the back row, may be replaced freely without counting against the team's substitutions, and may not serve in most competitions, block, or attack a ball lying entirely above the height of the net. Option A is wrong because basketball has no such role; its specialist terms are point guard and centre. Option C is wrong because handball distinguishes the goalkeeper, the pivot and the wings, but uses no libero. Option D is wrong because table tennis has no positional roles at all in singles. The word libero was borrowed from football, where it once described the free defender behind the back line.

The correct answer is C, 24 seconds. The shot clock gives the attacking side twenty-four seconds from gaining control of the ball to release a shot that touches the ring, and failure to do so hands possession to the opponents. Option A is wrong, but eight seconds is the companion rule to learn: that is the time within which the ball must be carried from a team's own half into the opponents' half. Option B is wrong because no clock in the game runs for twelve seconds, though a quarter in the professional NBA lasts twelve minutes. Option D is wrong because thirty seconds was the old shot clock in international basketball before it was shortened to speed the game up. The three-second rule, which limits how long an attacker may stand in the restricted area, completes the set.

The correct answer is B, two halves of thirty minutes each, making an hour of play with an interval between the halves. Option A is wrong because four quarters of ten minutes is the pattern of a basketball match under FIBA rules, the professional NBA using quarters of twelve minutes instead. Option C is wrong because three periods of twenty minutes is the pattern of ice hockey. Option D is wrong because volleyball alone among these games is decided by sets rather than by a clock, a set going to twenty-five points with a margin of two and the deciding fifth set to fifteen. Handball also has its own small clocks: a player may hold the ball for three seconds and take no more than three steps while holding it.

The correct answer is C, 25. Under the rally point system, in which every rally gives a point to one side or the other whoever served, the first four sets of a match are played to twenty-five points and must be won by a margin of at least two, so a set can run to 26-24 or beyond. Option A is wrong, but fifteen is the figure for the deciding fifth set, which is shorter and also needs a two-point margin. Option B is wrong because twenty-one points is the length of a game in badminton and in beach volleyball. Option D is wrong because thirty points belongs to no standard volleyball format, although the old side-out scoring system, in which only the serving side could score, used sets of fifteen.

The correct answer is B, seven metres, which is why a handball penalty is often simply called a seven-metre throw. Option A is wrong, but six metres is the line that marks the goal area, which no player except the goalkeeper may enter, and an attacker must release the ball before landing inside it. Option C is wrong, but nine metres is the free-throw line, the broken arc from behind which a free throw is taken after a minor offence. Option D is wrong because eleven metres is the penalty spot in football, offered here as a distractor. Learning the three handball arcs in order, six for the goal area, seven for the penalty and nine for the free throw, answers almost every measurement question the game attracts.