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By Dick Roppé, Resident My wife Lynn has two grandsons and both play water polo. I want to know - who named this sport water polo? They swim. They don't ride a pony and they don't swing a long-handled wooden mallet at a ball that's about the size of a softball. And furthermore, the ball used in water polo is basically the same size as a soccer ball. Instead of kicking a ball, participants throw it. Instead of running, they swim. In both sports they try to get the ball in a net guarded by a goalie. The game played today originated in the late 1800s as a form of rugby football. It was played in rivers in England and Scotland, with a small 3 to 4 inch ball constructed of rubber imported from colonial plantations in India. This "water rugby" came to be called "water polo" based on the English pronunciation of the Balti word for ball, pulu. (The Balti are an ethnic group found in India and Pakistan.) The original ball soon gave way to a soccer ball – called a football across the pond. This made it easier to pass and swim with the ball. However, the leather "football" would become waterlogged, very heavy and slippery and hard to control. In 1936, a water polo coach, James Smith, developed a ball made with an inflatable bladder and a rubber fabric cover. This improvement aided a player's performance. Little has changed since. With all the information cited above, it's my contention that water polo should be rebranded as water soccer not water polo. Splish, splash! By Clare Mendez, Resident The game of basketball originated in December 1891 when James Naismith, a teacher at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, wanted to come up with an indoor game to keep the young men active during the cold winter months. With the help of his wife he created a game that would focus on skill rather than strength, basing it on a game he played as a child named 'Duck on a Rock.' In that game players threw rocks at a target placed on top of a large boulder or tree stump. The game he ended up inventing is what we know today as basketball. It required very little equipment to play, all you needed were two peach baskets hanging 10 feet above the ground, and a soccer ball. The object of the game was to work as a team to throw or bat the soccer ball into the opposing teams peach basket, while defending a score in your peach basket from the opposition team. As you can imagine, it was a major pain getting the ball out of the peach basket, and so, eventually the bottom was cut out of the basket. I think Naismith would be pleased to know that his game is now played worldwide, by women and men, not just on professional courts, but in schoolyards, driveways and many other places where there's a ball and a hoop. You can see Naismith's 13 Rules of Basketball at http://www. worldofbasketball.org/basketball-history.htm. YOU SAY POLO? I SAY PULU! Who Invented Basketball? SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | MARCH 2020 11

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