When one thinks of sports, it is usually a mainstream activity, such as football or baseball. In reality, there are hundreds of lesser known and alternative sports, some of which stem off from primary ones. Similar sports are grouped into categories. The category of Team Sports comprises most of the familiar sports, from basketball to soccer. However, dozens of other categories exist as well, and each category can hold twenty to thirty individual sports!



Table sports include games like air hockey, billiards, and chess. Many table sports are not played professionally, as certain board games, like Stratego, are considered table sports. All card games, such as Poker, fall under this category as well. Even though all of these activities are in the same category, their level of involvement varies greatly. For example, table tennis requires more energy than Connect Four (which surprisingly is considered a table sport).

Sports in which animals participate are referred to as animal sports, logically. Well known sports, including horse racing and bull fighting, are part of this category. There are several interesting and somewhat humorous sports as well. One in particular, hamster racing, involves placing hamsters in wheels attached to cars and having them race down a short track. People even bet on hamster racing online, although many gamblers do not like to because of the unpredictability of the sport.

You probably never thought a radio could be the subject of a sport, but in amateur radio direction finding, it is. Participants use a compass and special equipment to locate a radio signal transmitter hidden in a forest. Depending on the power of the transmitter, the sport can be quite easy to incredibly difficult.

Remote control sports are ideal for those who enjoy fast-paced action but do not like to move around a lot. The most popular RC Sport is racing, which can be done with cars, boats, or flying craft. Robot fighting is more intensive than racing, as players usually need to build their own robot, which requires a fair amount of technical knowledge, and the willingness to allow something you spent months working on be destroyed in a matter of minutes.

Shooting sports have been popular for decades, and include activities which involve stationary or moving targets. Rifles, shotguns, and occasionally pistols are used in shooting sports; you will rarely find an automatic weapon utilized, mainly because they are illegal for civilians to own in most states. Trap shooting, in which shooters destroy mobile clay pigeons, is even an Olympic event. In fact, at the turn of the twentieth century, live pigeon shooting was a real Olympic game.

Kites are not just for general recreation, for there are a variety of sports which employ them. The most unusual of these sports is kite fighting. Participants attach knives to kites and attempt to break the lines of the other players, and the last man standing is deemed the winner. Other popular kite sports include kiteboarding and snowkiting.

Most people are familiar with competitive typing, but the sport is taken to a more intriguing level with the game of high speed telegraphy. In these competitions, participants are challenged to transmit Morse code signals at high speeds. HST is played worldwide, and international events are organized annually.