INTERNATIONAL SPORTS

BY JAE HURD

In the United States, we can be pretty intense about our sports. We engage with sports by rooting for our favorite teams, forming communities with fellow fans, and sometimes even organizing pick-up games to get a taste of the onfield action. When taking a look outside of how we view our own sports, it’s easy to see many of them as silly as well, such as Football, a game where using your feet on the ball is rare. We even have our own novelty sports, such as beer pong or dog surfing (dogs on surfboards). So, how about other countries? What novelty sports do they like to play? I will introduce to you three sports originating from different countries. In Scotland, aspiring logthrowers will train and compete in Caber Toss. It is named after a Scottish term for a cut down tree, a caber, and is a classic highlander game dating back to the 16th century. As the name suggests, competitors will take a large log between 1624 feet and chuck it. What makes this sport interesting, though, is that the scoring has nothing to do with how far you throw your log, but how well you throw it. There is a specific way the wooden beam must land for it to count as a success. According to Culture Trip, the beam of wood must make “one complete revolution” while in the air. For it to be considered a good throw, the larger end must be the one that hits the ground, landing so that the smaller end is furthest away from the thrower.. In some other countries they have a 12 person version of hockey. What’s special about it? The whole thing is played underwater. Yes, underwater hockey. For this game, a weighted puck is sent to the bottom of a pool—anywhere between 6-13 feet deep—and the 12 players simply have at it, two teams of six, each with their own 9 foot goal on each end of the pool. There are no goalies in underwater hockey, and it is a no contact sport, so the teams must use strategic formations for defense. The game is also very short, two 15 minute halves with a half time. No snorkels are provided, meaning during those 15 minutes, you must either hold your breath, or go up to catch it, risking the other team making a move. Underwater hockey is a game being picked up in many countries, maybe it’s time for the US to get involved. If you like pillow fighting, Canada may be the place to be. This sport is similar to wrestling in that it is held in a fighting arena with a surrounding crowd—but instead of using boxing moves to fight, competitors whack each other with pillows. Only pillow related attacks are allowed, and no arm-grabbing is allowed. Each round lasts only five minutes, and the winner is decided by points, which can be scored by getting head shots. The sport of pillow fighting started in a Canadian goth bar known as The Vatikan in Toronto[can you add some more context here? What happened so that the rules were formed and an actual competition began?]. It started as a women’s only sport, but recently has expanded south of Canada into the US—and especially into Florida, where all can compete. In this league, use special pillow cases as well to give the fighters more control over their moves. It can get pretty competitive, and injuries can happen. The Floridian Pillow Fighting League seems to take it far more seriously than the Canadians, mostly consisting of actual fighters. Either way, it’s a strange, yet oddly appealing, sport. It’s easy to see these sports as weird but they’re mostly pretty normal where they come from. Caber Toss especially. A lot of our sports probably sound strange to people who have never heard of them, football especially. It’s good to keep in mind that they’re all silly games, but that doesn’t make it silly to care about them or take them seriously.