Strange sport galore
An entertaining way of spending some time these days is discovering little-known sports. Thanks to the internet, we can go way beyond the classic football, basketball or golf and learn and enjoy minoritarian ways of entertainment. The three we are going to take a look at today all have professional players, and there are plenty of championships to see online.
DODGEBALL
The first we are going to analyse is dodgeball, which you may have heard of but never really looked into. In fact, in Spain children are taught a variation of this sport in school, but it is never seen as anything else than a pastime activity.
In dodgeball you have two teams of six players facing each other. Six balls are placed in the centre of the court and, when a whistle is blown, players run to pick up as many as possible before the other team does.
Then, the game consists of trying to knock out all opposing players by hitting them with the ball. However, the ball has to hit the player and then fall to the ground, because if the opposing player catches it, you are the one eliminated.
So matches are typically first a action-packed affair, with balls flying all over the place, and players jumping or ducking to avoid being hit. Then, when a few have been eliminated, it is possible that one team has all the balls, and you then see players talk amongst themselves, agreeing on a strategy to knock out the remaining opposition.
CHASE TAG
Tag is the classical game of running after someone with the goal of touching them, while the other player does all they can to keep this from happening.
When taken to the professional realm, we get the World Chase Tag championships. In these events, two teams of five players each face off in a set court filled with bars, platforms and other structures.
Points pitch one player of each team against each other. The evading player must try to escape from the hunter for 20 seconds. If they manage to do so, a point goes to the evading team; if not, no points are awarded. A total 16 points are played, and the team with the most points at the end, wins.
DISC GOLF
This event has similarities to regular golf: participants take turns trying to get closer to the end target in a set amount of tries. If they do so in that set amount, it is called a par, one less is a birdie, one more is a bogey, and so on. Furthermore, matches are typically played over nine or 18 holes. However, this is where the similarities end.
In disc golf, players are throwing discs around the allotted areas instead of striking balls. The goal here is to get the disc into a basket which has metal chains hanging into it in order to catch the disk as it arrives.
The game penalises players for going out of bounds, some courses have mandatory flight paths and holes typically involve a number of trees, pools of water and other difficulties that make players have to make spectacular throws in order to reach their desired destination on each attempt. There are three types of discs, drivers, mid-rangers and putters, each with their own characteristics, and players can throw whichever type they prefer on each attempt. There are also several different ways of throwing them, including backhand, forehand, hatchet, thumber or roller, among others.
Today they are over 7,000 disc golf courses worldwide. A vast majority are in the United States, but there are also hundreds in Finland, Canada or Sweden. In 2017, the last year with available data, the UK had 93 courses, and Spain, 11.