Member registration for Spring Program Session begins Mon, Jan 30!
Princeton YMCA
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DID YOU KNOW?
- In 2008, the Princeton YMCA celebrated a century of helping develop strong kids, strong families and strong communities in the Princeton area.
- Princeton University became the “parent of the intercollegiate YMCA” when the first YMCA college structure, Murray Hall, was built in 1879.
- In 1908, the student YMCA at Princeton University founded the Town Club for boys under 16 years old.
- The Dorothea House was used as early as 1938 as one of the first Princeton YMCA buildings.
- The YMCA/YWCA building in Princeton opened in 1958 at its present location. The pool opened the following year.
- The Princeton YMCA offers over 15 specialty summer camps.
- Nationally, YMCA day camps serve 500,000 children each summer.
- The Princeton YMCA provides 6,000 sessions of swimming lessons annually.
- YMCAs are collectively the nation’s largest provider of child care programs – serving over half a million children.
- Nationally, the Ys have more than 600,000 volunteers.
- In 1994, the YUSA launched a character development thrust focusing on the core values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility.
- In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps, which was patterned after the YMCA program of World Service Workers.
- The 1919 YMCA Swimming and Lifesaving Manual was one of the earliest works on the subject.
- Father’s Day, an idea of protestant ministers at the YMCA in Spokane, WA, was first observed on June 19, 1910.
- The first group swim lessons were taught in 1907 at the Detroit YMCA.
- YMCA instructor William Morgan invented volleyball in 1895.
- Using peach baskets tacked to a gym wall, Dr. James Naismith, invented basketball at a Massachusetts YMCA in 1891.
- The nation’s oldest continuously operating camp is a YMCA camp – the first at Orange Lake, New Jersey in 1885 with seven boys and one leader.
- YMCAs are at the heart of community life in 10,000 communities across the nation.
