The Story of the First Basket Ball Players

The story of how basketball was created, is well-known. During a harsh New England Winter, in a small gymnasium in a small college, the International YMCA Training School (now known as Springfield College), there was a group of restless college students. Young future YMCA secretaries (we would know them as CEOs or administrators today) were trapped indoors, were required to participate in athletic activities for an hour every day to satisfy the school's philosophy of being balanced in Spirit, Mind, and Body. During the winter, the activities the instructors offered for the "body" were marching, calisthenics, dumbbell drills, and various apparatus work. These were pale substitutes for the football, lacrosse, and baseball these highly competitive men played in warmer seasons. It wasn't long before trouble ensured! There was a need for something more.

Enter James Naismith, a thirty-one-year-old recent graduate of the school. A man of high ideals and someone who fully embraced Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick's (the superintendent of the school's physical department) theory that there was "nothing new under the sun." Combining aspects of different sports and memories of games from his youth, Naismith found the solution to keep these men engaged. Basket Ball! And a major world-wide sport was created.

But who were the restless young men who first played this game? The 18 college men of this one-hour class? Their names are known: Lyman W. Archibald, Franklin E. Barnes, Wilbert F. Carey, William R.Chase, William H, Davis, George E.Day, Benjamin S. French, Henri Gelan, Ernest G. Hildner, Genzibaro S. Ishikawa, Raymond P. Kaighn, Eugene S.Libby, Findley G. MacDonald, Frank Mahan, T. Duncan Patton, Edwin P. Ruggles, John G. Thompson & George R. Weller. But little is known about them. Little is known of their histories, their work, or their passions. This is what we hope you will find on the pages of this site. Through materials within the Springfield College Archives and Special Collections, some research online, and a little help from families and friendly researchers, you will learn a little of who these men were, what they did in their life, and how they continued the legacy started by Dr. Naismith and his Creation of the game of Basket Ball!