Strange Sports & Crazy Contests

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to wrap up the show today for our last few minutes by talking sports. Wait, not the ones you're used to hearing about. This is a call in on your favorite lesser-known sport, especially your lesser-known sport that other people might consider strange or exotic or weird. Who plays one or who follows? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. You know March Madness is over. Baseball season is planted now and underway, so let's give them a break and just give a brief spotlight to your favorite strange or lesser-known sports. Who's got one you think other people might enjoy hearing about? 212-433-WNYC. Here's an example. Catapulting. What? Yes. Gothamist's Hannah Frishberg recently covered a yearly competition in Brooklyn dedicated to building catapults. Or as they would prefer you to say, and I don't even know how to pronounce the spelling, but I think it's trebuchets. Participants will gather on April 27th for the "great trebulation" in the Green Central Knoll. That's Park and Bushwick. Teams compete to see whose catapult can launch a Lindt chocolate truffle the furthest, so o you get the idea.

Another sport that may seem strange to many but completely normal to someone from the Netherlands is Korfball. K-O-R-F ball. Almost exclusively played in the Dutch-speaking world, Korfball is similar to basketball, but the net doesn't have a backboard, and men and women play on the same team. If you have a niche sport of any kind that you play or follow, call or text us. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. One more as a model, getting lost might seem like something you would want to avoid, but if you want to try your hand at orienteering, that's how you get started.

In orienteering, you have to run from point to point, but you don't know where you started, and you also don't know where you're going. All you have is a compass and a map to try to finish the course, so any orienteers out there? Korfball, orienteering, catapulting. 212-433-WNYC. Who's involved in any of those or wants to shout out any other lesser-known or weird or unusual, or pretty exotic sport? 212-433-9692. Call or text, and we'll take you after this. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, to your weird or at least lesser-known sport that you play or are a fan of. 212-433-WNYC. We'll start with Carson in Manhattan. Hi, Carson, you're on WNYC.

Carson: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: What's your sport?

Carson: It is shuffleboard, so not the tabletop shuffleboard you might play in a bar, but the old school cruise ship or on the floor to-- with a stick to push the biscuits along. There's a large shuffleboard community in Brooklyn, the Royal Palms, a lot of us play in, but also in Chicago, down in Florida, and internationally as well. It's a great sport, highly competitive, but anyone can play it.

Brian Lehrer: How do you train yourself to get the disc in that little highest point, top of the triangle?

Carson: It's pretty much it's all mental preparation and as many reps as you can get on a shuffleboard court to make sure that you have the distance and the strength down, but it's mostly a mental game.

Brian Lehrer: Neat. Thank you for starting us off. Linus on the Upper West Side. Hi, Linus.

Linus: Hello, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What's your sport?

Linus: It's called tripto. It's related to splitso. It's played with multiple flying discs, three different sizes all nestled into each other. In tripto, it's a team sport, two against two, although it can be played cooperatively as well as competitively. The idea is to throw the three discs at about 10 or 15 yards, and if they're well thrown according to the catchers and dropped, the throwers get the points, as many as three points if all three are dropped. It's a Zen sport. You've got two recipients who have to catch three different discs of three different sizes that are coming to them and split up at the very last moment.

Because I've been playing what used to be called frisbee, but which I have called flying discs since I started playing in the '50s when they were first invented, I've played with hundreds if not thousands of people in New York City parks and have trained a lot of people to play splitso and tripto and a number of other--

Brian Lehrer: Where can people go if they want to watch splitso or tripto being played, which sound visually fascinating? Where can people go?

Linus: I play frequently in the Great Lawn or in the Sheep Meadow, but I also play in Prospect Park and Van Cortlandt Park or any place where there's enough space to play these games. I'm primarily a freestyle, although I'm in my 80s now, so I'm starting to get-- I'm really addicted to the aerobie, which is a ring that's been thrown farther than any object in history by a human being. It's been thrown over 1300 feet.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Linus, I'm going to leave it there. Really, really interesting. Thank you for your contribution. There are a few here that seem to come from Ireland. One listener writes, "Shout-out to camogie and hurling from Ireland. We live in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, where there is a vibrant Irish sports scene for kids and adults." I think John in Hoboken is going to further that theme. John, you're on WNYC. Hello.

John: Hi. How are you? No, not those sports. It's road bowling, which I think when I--

Brian Lehrer: Also played in Ireland. Yeah, go ahead.

John: It's played in rural Ireland. I think primarily the hotbeds are-- well, one of them is down in Cork. I found myself out in Cork driving along to catch up with friends and on rural roads in the middle of no place near some spots. We've been stopped because men in safety vests are sitting there saying, "You can't proceed," and like, what's going on? You realize there's there's 100 people coming over the hillside. They're going between villages as they roll what I guess historically would have been like a cannonball, a small shot put, and they're rolling it, trying to get as few bowls in between villages.

You might be going up mounds over verges off of hedgerows, trying to avoid people standing outside the pub. It's quite amusing. It's a lot of fun, and it's a local sport that's not played a lot of places.

Brian Lehrer: How about that? John, thank you very much. Rob on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rob.

Rob: Hey, Brian, how are you? First time caller, long-time listener. You're the best. I'm so nervous right now. I feel like I'm serving for Wimbledon. College tennis, it is totally different from pro tennis where there's just one match in and upon itself. College tennis has multiple matches going on at one time, and even though they're individual doubles matches first and then singles matches after three doubles, six singles, all concurrently, there's momentum swings that go on because let's say I'm playing next to you and we're teammates, I start doing really well.

You grab my momentum with me, and you start doing well, but conversely, if I start getting tight like I am now speaking with you, then your level will go down too. It's really incredible. Actually, in your neighborhood, Columbia has a new tennis facility that's beautiful. Columbia men's tennis team is number 10 in the country, and it's all the football and basketball powerhouses, and they've built a great program. It's unbelievable. Actually, their number one player is number one in the country and won the NCAA singles tournament in the fall.

Admission is free. Coincidentally, they have their last regular-season home match tomorrow at 2:00 against Ivy League foe Penn. Then first weekend in May, we'll be hosting the first two rounds of the NCAS. It's incredible. Last--

Brian Lehrer: That's really-- Rob, I got to go because the segment's ending, but that's really interesting. I never thought about that, college tennis being different because there are multiple matches going on at the same time, and they can influence each other. I'll sneak in a few more from text messages. Chicago has Whirlyball. You're on a basketball court in a bumper car with a lacrosse stick. Super fun. Somebody writes, "My son races track bikes at Casina Velodrome in Queens. Track cycling uses bikes that are fixed-gear and have no brakes." Thanks for all your calls on your weird sports.

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