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William G. Morgan invented the game of volleyball, or “Mintonette” as it was originally called, in 1895. Morgan observed that basketball, a sport, which was invented just four years earlier by his college classmate James Naismith, was much too demanding a sport for everyone and wanted to invent a sport that anyone could play—a sport where everyone had the opportunity for equal participation.

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It is no surprise that 110 years after the invention of this sport of equality, that it would be used as an agent for demonstrating the similarities and relationships that exists on both sides of the borderwall. In 2006, Brent Hoff who was the editor of the DVD magazine,  Wholphin, published by McSweeney’s, staged what he imagined to be the world’s first game of international border volleyball. Hoff’s premise raised many questions? Is such a game illegal? Does throwing a ball back and fourth constitute illegal trade?  This version of the game was much more physical than traditional volleyball. Since spikes are impossible only powerful hits are able to send the ball arching up to 50 feet in the air as it sails back and fourth across the wall, causing bruises to the wrists and arms of the players.[1] In addition to causing quite a stir in the international media, the simple game of beach volleyball over the borderwall also did something remarkable. More than an act of political theater, the game conceptually dismantled the meaning of the wall, dematerializing the two story metal posts from an insurmountable obstacle into nothing more than a line in the sand, where the players on each side were keenly aware of the players on the other and the wall was nothing more than a rule that could be negotiated by the mind, body and spirit of the players, perhaps conceptually transforming the act more into the ritualistic game of ulama, which William G. Morgan was likely unaware of.

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Ulama is a ball game still played by a few communities in Mexico, and is one of the oldest continuously played sports in the world, as well as the oldest known sport for using a rubber ball. The sport could be described as a wall-less volleyball, where players from each side attempt to keep a rubber ball in their air, passing the ball over a line drawn in the sand, using only their hips. Despite the fact that there is no barrier between the two sides, it is a rough, physical game and the hard ball being propelled by the hips of the players to the other side has been known to cause grave injury to the players, even death. In many ways both Morgan’s volleyball and ulama speak to many of the issues surrounding the relationships between people on two sides of the border, whether demarcated by an imaginary line or a wall. The pain and suffering, the equality, the friendship, the competition and the desire to transcend barriers are all present in the rules of the game and in the daily lives of those who engage the wall on a daily basis.

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And just as Morgan may have been unfamiliar with ulama, most certainly Hoff did not know that his was not the first game of international volleyball ever played.  In 1979, 27 years before Hoff took the beach in Friendship Park to serve it up against players on the other side, a humble game of volleyball was played between the citizens of Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora. It was part of the Fiesta Bi-Nacional, which is a celebration intended to defy the physical divisions imposed upon the residents of the sister cities and the larger region.[2] In addition to booths, food, picnic tables and drawing events set up directly along the wall, a volleyball court was designated on both sides of the 13’ tall wall where the U.S. and Mexico first came together to play a sport whose historical origins developed independently in each of their respected countries.

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The games have been played many times since that first game of “wallyball” at the Fiestas Bi-Nacionales. But the outcome of that first game, as games do have winners an losers, and despite the U.S. side having the advantage as the top of the barbed-wire topped wall was tilted toward the Mexican side, resulted in the Mexican side winning. While barriers had been broken during that first Fiesta Bi-Nacional game, the wall-cum-net dividing the two teams only allowed for three fingers of a “good-game” handshake of friendship at the conclusion of the game.[3]

Perhaps only coincidental, but worth noting nonetheless, was that perhaps the Naco game wasn’t first game of Wallyball. 1979, the first year that the borderwall game of volleyball was played in the two Nacos, and perhaps unknown to anyone there, was also the year that the official game of Wallyball, a fast-paced game of volleyball played in a racquetball court, was invented by Bill Dejonghe in Calabasas, California. According to the American Wallyball Association, there is a player base of over 15,000,000 around the world. And just like the historic game of ulama, which by 800 A.D. was played in both what is now the U.S. and Mexico, the ball used in Wallyball must be made of rubber.



[1] http://www.laweekly.com/2006-07-27/columns/viva-border-volleyball/2/

[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=aZiij0JbCqMC&pg=PA81&dq=naco+volleyball&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WtNVUvPFA8fn2AWF4YCIBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=naco%20volleyball&f=false

[3] http://www.funcork.com/i/3870

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