Volleywall Ball, 1950s

We have a fantastic collection in the Woodson of intramural records. For many years all the teams and results were kept in scrapbooks, some of them complete with action photos. I’ve used them fairly often, sometimes for scholarly purposes and other time to dig for material to tease my friends with.

One thing in them that still has me curious is a sport I’d never heard of before, volleywall ball. I was really baffled by it for quite a while and then I found a copy of the rules in someone’s scrapbook. Now I’m only slightly baffled.

I don’t know if this was just a Rice thing or if it ever spread beyond campus. Neither am I sure when it started or how long it survived or if it indeed still does. (I doubt it, but who knows.) The scrapbooks go up until the late 1960s and it was still around then. It sounds, frankly, like a blast.

Bonus: There’s a little Christmas tree in the back of the library, decorated with scraps of paper that have people’s wishes written on them. They’re pretty interesting.