10 Sporting Events That May Have Escaped Your Attention This Summer

Not a whole lot happens in the summer months in terms of dramatic, pressure-cooked, make-or-break sports battles, certainly not in a non-Olympic, non-World Cup year like 2011 – at least as far as mainstream sports are concerned. Basketball is over. There is no Super Bowl, no Stanley Cup. Baseball races usually don’t really get exciting until mid-September. And for international sports fans, Formula One takes a month off and top European soccer clubs are only just starting to get warmed up.

Yet that hasn’t stopped some enterprising folks from creating a number of intriguing athletic contests, a disproportionate number of which take place in the summer. Here are ten recent sporting competitions that might not have received a lot of coverage in your local paper:

The World Underwater Hockey Championships

Imagine, instead of squaring off at the TD Gardens or Rogers Arena, the Bruins and Canucks were to battle it out at the bottom of a swimming pool wearing snorkels and fins. Well, then you’d have underwater hockey, which might rank as the least spectator friendly sport known to man. After all, it’s not easy or advisable to slurp on a Budweiser while submerged. The Underwater Hockey World Championships were held in late August in Coimbra, Portugal. The World Confederation of Underwater Sports, the body which oversees underwater hockey, confirmed to us that Australia emerged victorious this year by beating South Africa 6-1 in the final. We take them at their word, though it is a bit difficult to verify: the games were played underwater.

The World Mobile Phone Throwing Championships

When it comes to throwing mobile phones long distances, nobody approaches the Finns. Contestants from Nokia-land traditionally overpower all takers, and the 2011 championships in Savonlinna, Finland were no exception. Finnish hurlers took the top three places in the men’s, women’s and junior categories.

The Lumberjack World Championships

The Lumberjack World Championships are the Olympics of logging-related athletics, and Hayward, Wisconsin is its Athens. Events this year the gamut of what people can do with wood, and all in the spirit of healthy competition: standing block chops, underhand chops, springboard chops, 60-foot climbs and, of course, log rolling.

The Dodgeball World Championship and Convention

Although many people might not have come near a dodgeball since elementary school there are pockets within the population that take the game seriously well into adulthood, as the eponymous 2004 Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn film made clear. Teams from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand gathered in Las Vegas this August for the 2011 Dodgeball World Championship and Convention.. “Rise”, a team from Los Angeles, won the Men’s Stinger Division, considered the most competitive of all the events, at this year’s tournament. 2011 witnessed the first-ever women’s championships as well.

The Disc Golf Association World Championships

As disc golf enthusiasts are keen to point out, their sport offers as an environmentally friendlier, cheaper and healthier alternative to the Scottish game. As of 2010, there were over 3,000 disc golf courses in the United States, the overwhelming majority of which are free. Santa Cruz, California was the site of the 2011 PDGA World Championships. The prize money is nothing to be scoffed at; this year’s total purse was over $108,000, with the winner taking home $7000. Not bad for throwing a Frisbee around for a few days.

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