YMCA Trivia
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58 free YMCA trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
These YMCA trivia questions cover the whole story of the Y, from the 1844 prayer meeting a young shop worker held for his colleagues to a movement with tens of millions of members on every continent. You will find the four sports that were invented inside YMCA gyms, the first residential camp, the youth movement that grew out of YMCA work, two Nobel Peace Prize winners with Y connections, the wartime recreation centres, the meaning of the red triangle and the year the American organisation adopted its one-letter nickname. The last section is for the song. The 1978 disco hit gets its own run of questions: the album it came from, who wrote it, the record that kept it off the top of the Hot 100, the television night the arm-spelling dance was born, the Guinness record and the ballpark tradition it inspired. Easy questions suit a staff social or a member event at your local Y; the harder ones on dates, founders and foreign names will stretch anyone. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia entries and the organisation's own history, and each question shows its explanation and source after you answer.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was the Young Men's Christian Association founded?
London
London: the association began on 6 June in a room at 72 St Paul's Churchyard, above the Hitchcock & Rogers shop where the founder lodged and worked.
Q 02Who founded the YMCA with eleven friends?
George Williams
George Williams, a young shop assistant from Somerset, started the association with eleven colleagues; he was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894 and buried in St Paul's Cathedral in 1905.
Q 03In which year was the YMCA founded?
1844
1844: the founder held the first meeting on 6 June that year, to improve the spiritual condition of young men working long hours in the city's shops.
Q 04What was the trade of the YMCA's founder?
Draper
Draper: the founder was a draper's assistant at Hitchcock & Rogers in St Paul's Churchyard, living in with fellow shop workers whose hours outside work he hoped to fill with prayer.
Q 05Which sport was invented at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield in 1891?
Basketball
Basketball: the instructor wrote 13 rules for an indoor winter game, and the first match was played with a soccer ball by a class of 18 students in December 1891.
Q 06Who invented the game played at the Springfield YMCA in December 1891?
James Naismith
James Naismith, a physical educator who later qualified as a physician, devised the game for a restless winter class; he watched it debut as an Olympic sport at Berlin in 1936.
Q 07What served as the goals in the very first Springfield games of 1891?
Two peach baskets
Two peach baskets were nailed to the gymnasium balcony rail, 10 feet up; their bottoms were closed, so the ball had to be retrieved after every score.
Q 08William G. Morgan invented volleyball in 1895 at the YMCA in which Massachusetts city?
Holyoke
Holyoke: Morgan was physical director of the Holyoke YMCA and wanted a gentler indoor game for older businessmen, played over a raised net.
Q 09What did William G. Morgan originally call his new net game?
Mintonette
Mintonette was Morgan's original name; at an 1896 demonstration, Alfred Halstead suggested 'volley ball' after watching players volley the ball over the raised net.
Q 10Futsal, the indoor version of football, was created in 1930 at a YMCA in which country?
Uruguay
Uruguay: Juan Carlos Ceriani devised the game at the Montevideo YMCA in 1930, the year the country hosted and won the first football World Cup.
Q 11Who invented racquetball at the Greenwich, Connecticut YMCA in 1950?
Joseph Sobek
Joseph Sobek, a tennis and handball professional in Greenwich, wanted a faster game than squash; he designed a strung paddle and based his rules on handball and paddleball.
Q 12What name did the inventor of racquetball give his game?
Paddle rackets
He founded the National Paddle Rackets Association in 1952, and the game spread through some 40,000 handball courts at YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers.
Q 13Which youth organization did YMCA boys' work secretary Edgar M. Robinson help launch in 1910?
Boy Scouts of America
Q 21The first YMCA in North America opened in 1851 in which city?
Montreal
Montreal: its YMCA opened on 25 November 1851, weeks before the first United States branch, and the country's YMCAs shared a governing body with the American ones until 1912.
Q 22The first YMCA in the United States, founded by seaman Thomas Valentine Sullivan, opened in which city?
Boston
Boston: Sullivan, a retired sea captain turned missionary, opened the branch at the Old South Church on 29 December 1851, a few weeks after the continent's first branch opened north of the border.
Q 23In 1853 the Reverend Anthony Bowen founded the first YMCA for African Americans in which city?
Washington, D.C.
Boy Scouts of America: William D. Boyce incorporated it in February 1910 and handed it to the YMCA to develop; Robinson ran it until James E. West took charge in 1911.
Q 14Camp Dudley, the YMCA camp founded by Sumner Dudley in 1885, sits beside which lake?
Lake Champlain
Lake Champlain: after early seasons at other sites, Camp Dudley settled near Westport, New York, on the lake's western shore in 1891 and has run there every summer since.
Q 15Under what name did Springfield College open in 1885?
School for Christian Workers
School for Christian Workers was the 1885 name; it became the International YMCA Training School in 1890 and adopted the Springfield College name in 1954.
Q 16Henry Dunant, a young Swiss YMCA secretary, went on to found which organization?
The Red Cross
The Red Cross: Dunant founded it after witnessing the Battle of Solferino in 1859, having earlier helped organize the 1855 Paris conference that created the World Alliance of YMCAs.
Q 17In which year did World YMCA president J. R. Mott win the Nobel Peace Prize?
1946
1946: Mott shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Emily Greene Balch for decades of YMCA and student-Christian work, and became honorary president of the World Council of Churches at its 1948 founding.
Q 18The Paris Basis motto "That they all may be one" is taken from which Gospel?
John
John: the verse is John 17:21, from Jesus' prayer after the Last Supper, and it appears on the open Bible in the World Alliance emblem adopted in 1881.
Q 19According to Luther Gulick, the YMCA red triangle's three sides stand for which three things?
Mind, body and spirit
Mind, body and spirit: Gulick, physical director of the YMCA training school, drew the triangle in 1891 to show the whole-person ideal, and the red triangle marked YMCA services for soldiers in both world wars.
Q 20In which year did YMCA of the USA rebrand itself as "The Y"?
2010
2010: YMCA of the USA unveiled 'the Y' and a new logo in July that year, offered in several colour combinations in place of the red-and-black mark.
Washington, D.C.: Bowen, born enslaved in Maryland, bought his freedom in 1826 and became the first Black clerk at the US Patent Office; the Anthony Bowen YMCA in the city's Shaw neighbourhood bears his name.
Q 24By what abbreviation is the YMCA known in Germany, Austria and Switzerland?
CVJM
CVJM stands for Christlicher Verein Junger Menschen; the final word changed from Männer (men) to Menschen (persons) in 1985 to include women.
Q 25What were the 250 YMCA recreation centres set up in Britain within ten days of World War I called?
Huts
Huts: the YMCA's 'Red Triangle' huts offered tea, writing paper and concerts to troops, and temporary ones followed in France and near the front, staffed by thousands of volunteers.
Q 26In World War II the YMCA helped found which body serving US troops?
The USO
The USO: the YMCA was one of six civilian groups that formed the United Service Organizations in 1941, and it also served prisoners of war and Japanese Americans held in internment camps.
Q 27The YMCA grew into a worldwide movement founded on the principles of which Victorian ideal?
Muscular Christianity
Muscular Christianity, the Victorian ideal pairing athletic vigour with faith, shaped the YMCA; the 1865 World Conference at Elberfeld in Germany affirmed developing the whole person, body included.
Q 28Which social reformer served as the YMCA's first president, from 1851 until his death in 1885?
The Earl of Shaftesbury
The Earl of Shaftesbury: Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 7th Earl, was already famous for Factory Act and child-labour reforms, and his patronage gave the young movement respectability.
Q 29Which 1851 event in Hyde Park helped the YMCA spread beyond Britain?
The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition drew foreign visitors to the YMCA's meetings, and by 1855 the movement was strong enough to hold its first World Conference in Paris.
Q 30From 1878 until the 2020s, the world YMCA head office was based in which city?
Geneva
Its new home is Vernier, after 25 years in a listed villa at 12 Clos Belmont.