Fun Facts About the Y

YMCA OF GREATER WAUKESHA COUNTY

The YMCA has a long and very interesting history. Some of our current holidays, sports, and organizations began with the Y.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Two major sports, basketball and volleyball, were born at the YMCA.
• We have the Y to thank for Father's Day. Father's Day was pitched at regional YMCA meeting as a special day to honor dutiful dads everywhere.
• Hallmark was created at the YMCA. Joyce C. Hall, founder, started selling greeting cards while living at a Y.
• A YMCA instructor created the first group swimming lesson.
• The YMCA was the first to establish certification programs for lifesaving, swimming and aquatic instruction.
• Male swimwear used to be aggressively prohibited by numerous chapters before the 1960s. 
• The YMCA also pioneered and greatly expanded summer camping, night school, vocational counseling, adult education, college student services, and junior college.
• YMCA World Service workers were forerunners of Peace Corps volunteers.
• The YMCA assisted in the formation of other major voluntary groups such as Boy Scouts, Camp Fire, and the USO.
• The YMCA sued the Village People for their hit 1978 single.

AQUATICS, WEIGHTLIFTING AND FITNESS CLASSES ALL HAVE ROOTS IN THE YMCA

Swimming and aquatics have long been associated with the YMCA, and tens of millions of people across the country learned how to swim at the YMCA. It was not always this way, however, and for many years swimming was seen as a distraction from legitimate physical development.

It is hard to overestimate the effect the YMCA movement has had on swimming and aquatics in general. A Springfield College student, George Goss, wrote the first American book on lifesaving in 1913 as a thesis. It was a YMCA national board member (then the YMCA International Committee), William Ball, who in the early 1900s encouraged the Red Cross to include lifesaving instruction in its disaster and wartime services programs. The first mobile swimming pool was invented at the Eastern Union YMCA (N.J.) in 1961, enabling the Y to take instruction and swimming programs to people who could not go to the Y.

The term "bodybuilding" was first used in 1881 by Robert Roberts, a member of the staff at the Boston YMCA. He also developed the exercise classes that led to today's fitness workouts.