An English author in the early nineteen century recorded that a five-a-side game similar to volleyball was played in the Middle Ages.  Volleyball as we know it today, like basketball, had its beginnings in the 1890s in a YMCA gymnasium in Massachusetts, United States.  Basketball had led to the creation of volleyball because in 1895 William G Morgan was looking for an alternative activity for the middle-aged male users who had found basketball to be too strenuous. The sport originated with teams of nine and the current six-a-side indoor game appeared after World War I.

Wherever in the world the United States had an influence, volleyball was introduced. American soldiers took the game to Western Europe when they served in France in the Great War. From Western Europe the sport spread throughout the rest of that continent. By the 1930s the Communist Party of the USSR acknowledged that volleyball was one of the sports that would provide its citizens, of all ages, with a source of recreation.

Beach volleyball is thirty years younger than indoor volleyball. It too had its foundations in California. By World War II, the sport had spread considerably throughout Europe. The 1950s saw a further rise in popularity in the United States and the in 1980s the South Americans, particularly the Brazilians, embraced the game. Both versions of the sport have continued to grow around the world. 

The International Volleyball Federation was founded in 1946, ten years before the sport was recognised by the International Olympic Committee. Volleyball (indoor) for men and women was added to the Olympic program in Tokyo 1964 with the Soviet Union winning the men’s and Japan the women’s in front of the home crowd.

Beach volleyball gained Olympic status in Atlanta 1996. The United States team of Charles “Karch” Kiraly and Kent Steffes won the men’s title. Kiraly was a member of the gold medal-winning United States team in indoor volleyball in Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988.

Traditional six-a-side indoor volleyball is referred to at the Olympic Games as volleyball. So the Olympic sport of volleyball has two disciplines - beach volleyball and volleyball. Both disciplines follow the same basic skills, and the flow of play follows similar lines: one team serves, the other tries to win the rally - or 'side-out' - with a pattern of dig, set, spike within the requisite three touches. 

The court for indoor volleyball is 9m x 9m and the beach court was reduced for Athens to 8m x 8m. The net height for men is 2.43m and 2.24m for women.

In Volleyball, the team winning a rally scores a point (Rally Point System). When the receiving team wins a rally, it gains a point and the right to serve, and its players rotate one position clockwise.

Indoor matches are played in the “best of five set” format. The first four sets are played to 25 points and the fifth set to 15. For all sets a 2 point advantage is required, with no cap.

Beach volleyball matches are the “best two of three set” format. The first team to win two sets wins the match. The first two sets are played to 21 points, and the 3rd set if needed is played to 15 points. For all sets a 2 point advantage is required, with no cap.

Kerri Pottharst and Natalie Cook won Australia’s first ever volleyball Olympic medal when they won the bronze, behind the Brazilian pairing of Sandra Pires and Jacqueline Silva, in Atlanta 1996. Four years later in Sydney, Pottharst and Cook won the gold medal before an enthusiastic hometown audience on Bondi Beach.

Only one Australian indoor volleyball team, the men in Athens 2004 has ever qualified to play at the Olympic Games.

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