by Cassie Florido

As I was sitting in newspaper class, I was trying to think of a good topic to write about this week. Well, after a quick discussion with the people around me (shout out to Madeline Best), I typed “weird sports” into Google search. To sum it all up, some of the things I found were frightening. I came across a long list of “sports” that people actually play. Some of them I can’t even begin to explain. Some I can’t mention on here. Some should not even be considered sports. But really, since when is mustache growing and cup stacking considered sports. I don’t really know, but those aren’t even the weirdest ones.

One of the sports that kept popping up when I was looking through all these weird sports was cheese rolling. In cheese rolling  the players start at the top of a hill and roll the cheese down the hill. The winner is the person who runs down to the bottom of the hill before the cheese and the other players. The pictures from this sport were pretty intense. One man even chose to participate with nothing but his boxers on. Well, I guess if that helps you beat cheese down the hill, go for it boxer guy. This sport made it to the weird sports list because honestly, what would you think if you saw a bunch of people rolling cheese down a hill in boxers? Weird.

One of the most popular and recognizable weird sport is quidditch. Everyone knows what quidditch is. If you don’t, you need to reevaluate your life and watch countless hours of Harry Potter. Many colleges have a quidditch club. It’s actually pretty intense. Players have to have a broom between their legs at all times. And if that doesn’t make you look stupid enough, one person dresses in all gold and runs around in circles pretending to be the snitch. On college teams, the snitch is allowed to run around the whole campus. Just imagine people running around campus with brooms between their legs chasing someone dressed in all gold. It’s pretty weird but awesome at the same time. And I just want to thank whoever brought this Harry Potter sport to real life, you are a legend.

Another unusual sport is shin kicking. Yep, shin kicking. The goal of shin kicking is basically to kick your opponent as hard as you can in the shins. Each time your opponent falls on the ground, you get a point. The person with the highest score after three rounds is the winner. This sport is weird because who thinks it’s fun to be repetitively kicked in the shins. Not me. So, if you soccer players thought your shins had it rough, try shin kicking.

One of my personal favorite weird sports has to be speed walking. Apparently, there are so many techniques that these “walkers” can choose to do during their race. The main rule is that at all times one foot must be in contact with the ground. In the Olympics, “racewalking” was probably one of my favorites. I literally laughed the whole time. How does walking fast qualify as an Olympics Sport? I guess that means all STA girls are performing an Olympic sport as we make the awkward fast walk across the quad when we are late to class.

Finally, another weird sport is cardboard tube dueling. Cardboard tube dueling even has its own league called the Cardboard Tube Fighting League. The most important rule in cardboard tube dueling is don’t break your tube. I was sad to find out that players aren’t allowed to stab each other with the tube. They take “stabbing” VERY seriously. Stabbing your opponent can get you kicked out of the whole event. Also shields are banned from cardboard tube dueling events. However, for protection, (because cardboard is SO painful) players are allowed to wear cardboard costumes. Honestly, I would not hesitate to play cardboard tube dueling. I mean, of course it’s a little weird, but who doesn’t want to walk around whacking people with cardboard tubes. I do.

After reading about all of these weird sports, don’t tell me you don’t wanna try them. These sports are probably some of the funniest ideas I have ever heard of. Maybe we should do some of these on the STA campus. I think an STA Weird Olympics is a must. Anyone who wants to do this, hit me up. I’m not kidding, let’s do this.