[Closed] Odd sports you HAVE done

bit posh those...

I used to be a bit of a dab hand with a croquet mallet

UK & England cadet full-bore target rifle gold medallist.
Competition Clay pigeon shooting

hockey goalie for 15 years, ended up in Southern Prem league.

Squash & fives at school.

Have tried fencing and rackets. Would like to have done more of both.

Cricket scorer 🙂

I played ultimate frisbee for 4 years then my knees gave up on me 🙁

fly fishing

When I was at school at trampolined for the world...

Mountain bike riding. It'll never catch on.

Er, squash and the 200m are the least popular sports I've played I think. Although MTBing is probably less popular than those two!

I used to know a UK Punting champion, and I'm currently world pea shooter (team) champion.

I think whatnobeer might be edging it at the moment 🙂

Late Edit - richmars takes it!

I was North of England Junior Barebow Field Archery champion.

But then I was also the National Pig Impersonation Champion two years on the trot(ter) - not sure how sporty that is.

I have a silver medal from the BUSA Canoe Polo championships back in my university days.

I still help out at the Whitewater racing events and Slalom but they aren't as unusual.

I always wanted to get good at a niche sport and say I was national champion etc.

A neighbour took me to play billiards once. God, that was dull. And is it a sport?

Racketball is ace - squash for tennis players/ old men.
Fell racing.

Improvised bobsleigh down Cave Dale in the ice.
Improvised road luge on skateboards.
BMX jousting - riding flat out at an opponent and trying to knock them off using a big piece of pipe lagging

I'm surprised I made it past the age of 12 to be honest.

I don't consider Windsurfing to be all that odd but I did it all through my teens, and not living on the coast, I was the only one in the whole school (town even apart from my Father) who did it.

Life time regret, getting an invite to join the Olympic development squad aged 12, and declining as I was "too scared". 🙄

Played hurling up till late teens - not at all unusual for me for probably looks a bit savage to most of you. Got some right hammerings from psycho corner backs; if you were small and fast, you played corner forward. If you were big, psycho and fast, you played corner back...I would stand at the start of each game shitting myself waiting to see what big country mullicker I was facing this time 🙂

I hold my hand up for Lacrosse.

Note i played the international rules game (as popular in American schools collages) not the girls boarding school version.

Now it's getting interesting 🙂

To my shame (now) I was Bible Quiz champ 2 years in a row when I was in the Boy's Brigade. Not really a sport I know, but it was competitve!

Just remembered another one!
At school I was slow bicycle champion. (The last one to ride 100m without putting your feet down. I'm still waiting for the call from the BCF.)

Just spotted GL’s windsurfing comment. I didn’t mention it co’s its not obscure but me and my mate were also the only people we knew who did it. I would have done more if it hadn’t been for the lacrosse!

Windsurfing a lot, although not particaully niche. Dinghy Sailing competativly although pretty average. Gliding at a reasonable level, that was a good one. I'd be doing it today except for the cost issue!
Biggest regret not winnning the world champs in any of the above. Only natural talent, dedication, time, money, beer and girls stood in my way.

Slow bike races! wow reminisce moment

Trackstands really spoilt that....

played volleyball for the North of England region while at school.

Have tried my hand at duck punting

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Fencing, at school. That was very cool.
XC ski-ing, very popular in Kentish Town. Did it when I was in the TA's the infantry regiment I was in had stong links with Norway. Bought my own kit and it never snowed again.
Pocket Billiards.

I was Northern Ireland salmon casting champion when I was 13 - beat all the adults

Any Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling runners here?

😉

National (well, more like regional really) league Shinty for a pretty average Edinburgh team. Used to get punched, clobbered and kicked every week by nutters from the Highlands. Gave up when I'd broken all my fingers at some point, and had become a bit of an A+E regular.

Trackstands really spoilt that....

How do you compete at salmon casting? Catching, sure, but casting?

accuracy.

I did the 4 man bob. Bloody scary. Seem like a good idea at the time.

there was distance casting and then accuracy - landing the fly inside floating hoops

pony club gymnkana.. just for the girls.. cant beat a bit of posh

Played volleyball in the national league (only Div 3 though) for a few years, then played London Div 1 for a while which is a pretty similar standard

Played ultimate for many years, was a founder member of a couple of teams - Bradford Uni team, Bad Habits in the London league

Tried fives at school once or twice, but never really got on with it. I now do a fair lot of wakeskating (thing a more niche version of wakeboarding) and a lot of winching (think a more niche version of wakeskating. Hmmm Double niche. Must be like riding a Marin singlespeed with a beard and SPD sandals, but cooler).

Play in a rounders league with all the dental nurses! 😉
Followed by cold beer...followed by an even colder shower....

did pole vault quite seriously for about 5 years.

We used to play a game in primary school based on a netball court that involved throwing a football end to end. Was quite good actually.

I have a silver medal from the BUSA Canoe Polo championships back in my university days.

I still help out at the Whitewater racing events and Slalom but they aren't as unusual.

However I reckon I can trump the lot of you with a sport less than 30 people in this country have ever taken part in. Ski orienteering. Like XC skiing, but in a specially prepared maze of narrow tracks with a map. I competed in the [url= http://www.skio2011.com/ ]World Masters championship[/url] this year (and didn't come last!)
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Not especially odd, but:

I did a couple of solo paragliding flights off a small mountain in North Wales. It was a bit hair raising as I was guessing how to do it. The first flight I managed to stall and fell some way before it re-opened, fortunately still high above the ground! I got land rover-ed back up and the second go was actually enjoyable. I even managed to land nicely in a field next to the dual carriageway. Probably wouldn't do again though.

I had a go at land-boarding with a power kite, as I'm reasonably handy with biggish kites. It was not great though as I hurt the tendons in my knee when I got dragged over. Wouldn't attempt again.

korfball

I spent an afternoon on a longboard (skateboard) in the Alps. You get to a point where you are going to fast to turn (turning sharpish is the only method of slowing) and you just have to keep going until you get to a flat bit of road to slow down. Very scary and I never did it again.

...actually I've done quite a variety of odd sports:

roller hockey
punt jousting
roller skiing

I'm an amateur jockey in the winter, point-to-point racing. Properly good fun.

Bob Skeleton - headfirst, downhill on a tea tray at 90mph+
Could have been a contender, if only I didn't need to sink a pint or two before I could face launching myself from the top ;0)

You see, I knew there'd be some real oddball stuff 🙂

i was a pro water polo player for a couple of years. By pro i mean getting accomodation, equipment and food etc paid for nothing extravagent! Sort of how i imagine prison to be like

Hydrospeeding. Once. Never, ever again.

My mate Dave persuaded me to go snowkiting in Norway for a holiday a few years back. Think snowboarding fused with kitesurfing on a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere in Norwegian winter. Awesome and scary. But not as awesome as the youth hostel sandwiches (what is it about foreign packed lunches?) and not as scary as driving around in the blizzards.

*puts hand up*

Its not a sport, but one of my more esoteric hobbies is campanology.

Found this on the net...

I practice Iaido....its a martial art but wouldn't class it as a sport as its all kata's....but I get to play with my sword* 😀

*my real sword you filthy, filthy people

Windsurfing for quite a while (Hoping to get back into it shortly)

Played Petanque (French Boules) at county level as a Teen

10 pin bowling in a Local league more recently

EDIT: Played Street hockey as well in my teens (roller Hockey on tarmac with Ice hockey sticks)

The anarchy that was (whitewater) raft racing on a ski field as part of a winter festival in NZ.
Half a dozen people in a raft attempting to control themselves on snow and ice with paddles...

In hindsight this was a pretty stupid event, and I don't think it's been repeated.

Riversurfing is ace fun, having your head at water level with the visibility limitations, instead of above it as you do in a raft makes for a pretty intense experience.

Dry ski slope racing.

I once took part in the Hallaton bottle-kicking, in which two Rutland villages fight over 3 beer barrels, with lots of the old ultraviolence. The only rules are no eye-gouging, no strangling and no weapons. Someone kicked me in the nuts 10 minutes after the start and I never got nearer than 100 yards to the 'bottle'.

Tried Mountain Boarding a few times... that really hurt.

Played a few rounds of frisbee golf when hanging out in the mountains in North Carolina. Bizarrely my local park here has a frisbee golf course set out, with proper chain basket 'holes'. Only seen it used once, by a couple of guys who each had a whole quiver of frisbees, just like a set of clubs I guess.

At one school we used to play a game called Kingpin. Played with a tennis ball and hands (rather than raquets) with 6 players in a 2x3 grid, marked King, Queen, Jack, Dunce, Dunce 1, Dunce 2. King served, then players smack the ball about like 6way tennis - ball had to bounce once in your square then into someones else's. If you messed up you went down to Dunce 2 and everyone moved up one. No winner, object was just to get up to King and stay there as long as possible. Never met anyone who wasn't from that school who had played it.

Shinty...bound to loads of highlanders on here though so probably not unusual... Musselburgh strictly speaking isn't a camanachd hotbead but me and some mates who'd played at Uni started a team in mid 90s...got to a final in our first year! Highlight for me was slotting the penalty to take us into the final...lost interest when a kinobber with an unhealthy interest in Braveheart joined and tried to make everyone learn Gaelic. (think he was from Glenrothes!)

Shinty...bound to loads of highlanders on here though so probably not unusual

Yes, but I played it at our school in Cambridgeshire.

There's an underwater hockey club here in Oban, octopush is a name for it I believe. Incredible sport to play, you basically hold your breath for an hour moving a puck about on the bottom of the pool with a stick.

Chris

I spend more time paramotoring than cycling at the moment.

At school we invented our own martial art called Wacky-****y. It was incredibly violent and largely pointless. As the teachers pointed out at the time, there were no real winners 😕

vinnyeh - only in NZ could they come up with anything as utterly mental as River Surfing. Great fun! interspersed with utterly life-threatening terror

Nothing particularily unusual for me:
- Shot small-bore for the university team
- Played chess for the uni and to a regional level as a schoolboy
- Athletics (hurdles and long-jump) to a regional level as a schoolboy

I used to be quite good at most sports I tried so did a lot of them to school-team level (footie, badminton, basketball, swimming etc) and even held a few school records. Amazing to look back on it considering how crap I am at sports now!

There's an underwater hockey club here in Oban, octopush is a name for it I believe. Incredible sport to play, you basically hold your breath for an hour moving a puck about on the bottom of the pool with a stick.

I used to do that, it makes swimming interesting.

I played "Rock-it-ball" at uni for my hall once. Not convinced of its status as sport though.

Done karate for 8.5 years now, but that's not that odd/unusual.

I play bike-polo. It would be much nicer if it wasn't so niche and people realised it wasn't JUST for hipsters.

I played roller hockey to a regional level at about 14-15 years old. Not sure if its what aracer is talking about though. I play the one referred to as "rink hockey" in the EU on quad skates and a stack that is the same as REALLY old field hockey sticks. Good fun, nobody cries about getting hurt like in football.

Zorbing
Kayaking down a mountain in 3 foot of powder
Land yachting
Snurfing
Speed Riding

...and then theres the drunk ones.

done octopush, played motoball (5 a side footie on converted motorbikes), currently play floorball/innebandy and represented my university at pinball and dirty scrabble

Water Polo and comp safari(might have to buy a Bowler tomcat for next year's season ) when I'm in the UK

When I'm in the US:
Practical rifle/shotgun/pistol.
Cowtipping.
Street and pro Street Drag Racing.
and Comp Safari again.

**** Just remembered

I did banger racing as a schoolboy for a few years. The outfit was called the Ahern Rats. We raced White City! Upton Park, somewhere in Essex I can't recall the name - Rayleigh? and Boxmoor on a grass track.
One of the familes Skip hire business was the base for it.

[i]Who's hiding a secret lacrosse career? [/i]

/Waves.

I played for quite a succesful team for a few years when I was 15/16. I was rubbish though. That game can turn very violent, very quickly.

Fives for me as well, it was about the only sport at school I was any good at (apart from long distance running). I was one of those poor unfortunates who was always picked last for football but I was bloody good at Fives! 🙂

We all played a game similar to fives in Ireland...in a squash court type thing - but called it handball. There used to be loads of three walled courts at crossroads all over the country - I assume they've been knocked down and have a half-built house on them these days.

barefoot waterskiing during the first half of the 90's and wakeboarding from the early days in '89 up until 2005,

barefooting qualifies for a bit different wakeboarding clearly does not unless you had the original 'skirf' board to learn on !!!, i still have a 1993 shapiro hyperlite wakeboard that i can't bring myself to sell,

Any Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling runners here?

ME!!!

Did it in 2009 (I think, maybe 2008?) Anyway, the last year before it was banned. I know some locals have carried it on unofficially since. Oddly enough it was spectator casualties that resulted in the H&S people taking a dislike to it.

Not as bad as it looks here in reality

I've played unicycle hockey in the UK league. Sort of like roller hockey, a lot more sensible than bike polo as unicycles are way more manouvrable.

Oh and white water swimming, although not sure if that is a sport really, more just a pastime.

play petanque every day, mon to fri. To see who has to make tea at afternoon break, i made tea today...