This is a portrait of Alfred Thompson Halstead (1862-1908), a YMCA secretarial student at the YMCA Training School, now Springfield College, in 1891 and faculty there from 1892-1895. Written on the back the name Alfred T. Halsted does have a question mark next to it. Halstead is credited for popularizing volleyball. Invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan (1870-1942), a physical director at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, volleyball was originally intended for businessmen who desired an activity less strenuous than basketball. First played by raising a tennis net to a six foot height and using the inside bladder of a basketball as a volleyball, the game combined the rules of tennis, handball, and baseball. The game did not require a fixed number of players and went for nine innings with three "outs" per team. Although Morgan originally called this game “mintonette,” Halstead suggested “volley ball” (then two words) as a more accurate representative of the game during its 1896 premiere at the YMCA Sports Conference hosted by Springfield College.
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