My high school (go chargers!) had amer football, baseball, basketball, track etc...heck, I was on the surfing team...
But what if yous Brits don't play soccer? What are 'alternate' high school sports which you played 'n stuff?
And do you guys have american-styled cheerleader chicks?
football,
rugby, cricket, tennis. mostly rugby.
basketball
hockey
And we don't do cheerleaders
Probably because they're tacky and just a little bit sexist.
...and because our girls aren't as hot!
:D
my school had cheerleaders
and come to think of it, so does my uni
'chase the goth'
was always a popular alternative to football in our school.
They didn't play football at my school...
not officially anyway.
It was rugby, hockey and cricket.
Athletics was big too, as was tennis (Tim Henman was an 'old boy' so there were courts galore).
They loved hockey so much, it's quite a fun sport. The rugby and cricket teams were rubbish though.
VERY jealous of your surf team though, Cali high schools FTW!
^ this, basically
Although we did play football from year 11 onwards.
did you have one of those ridiculous 30,000 seater school stadiums?
No...but yeah kinda
Our high school amerfootball games are played at the junior college cos it seats a few thousand and the big rivalry with Fountain Valley is played where the pro LA Angels baseball team plays ...but not 30,000 people, maybe 10,000 for that game.
All the other sports are on campus and usually only moms dads and g/f's show for 'alternative' sports.
Were you ever involved with the CASL?
That sounds so good, I wish they had an equivalent to that in the UK when I was younger.
http://www.caslusf.com/
Not me ...I kinda sucked at skateboarding
My friends rode for Vans and later Bones, Stacey Peralta 'n all that. You probably don't know those "old" skaters tho...this was in the 80s eh.
You'd be surprised...I'm 28
so am au fait with the whole Dog Town/H-Street/Vision/Animal Chin era
We played football
almost exclusively...then when we had to do swimming we played water polo...I m pretty good at playing football so compared to some of the dead weights you get in P.E it was a bit of a piss take....scoring from half way line into the spazzy kid etc.
from what i can tell
school sporting culture is a different beast in Britain to what it is over the pond. Most state run schools will definately have a football team, most likely a rugby team and a cricket team for a bit of a laugh and some slacking off when the summer comes. Whilst they are supported, it's usually only a few parents on the sidelines swearing at the ref with one or two curious onlookers. Watching US tv/films (my only point of cultural reference) i get the impression that most US High School teams play in purpose built stadia somewhere on the school grounds, have fairly large audiences and a whole heap of pomp and ceremony surrounding it. Is that accurate?
The equation changes again over here when you look at private schools who generally have a fuck load of money and usually have very high standard rugby, cricket and hockey teams.
I'd agree with this........
at one point during the 6 Nations there were 4 guys who went to my brother's school on the field for England.
Their rugby team were and are fucking brilliant!
See above
but really only the american football teams will get "community" support as opposed to fans with a vested interest.
Times have changed though. With professional sports attracting such $$$$$$ ...the kids are recruited straight from high school a lot of times and so ...I dunno, it's taken away some of the 'wholesomeness' of it all.
Someone was telling me a while ago that
college football was the biggest sport in the US in terms of sheer support, would you say this was the case?
Yes
The Superbowl attracts more viewers...baseball and basketball attract large dollars thru sheer number of games...but college football is massive.
Our LA pro football team moved to St Louis cos of little support...but try finding a ticket for USC or UCLA football... the Rose Bowl game with one of those two playing is near impossible unless you wanna drop a couple grand. But it's almost worth it cos the fans go berserk, like your soccer fanatics...only they don't beat each other up as much. ;)
Our football fans wouldn't beat each other
up anywhere near as often is they had to worry about whether the other guy was carrying a Glock 17!
:D
hockey and rugby
I did fencing. I'm so fucking middle class it makes me sick.
Oou, fencing
that'd be wayy upper class here. I was tempted to do that at 'uni' but I decided to drink and drug my way through college instead... but fencing, yeah, that's well cool.
Aside from football..
...we did rugby league in games, but never had a team (and most people just moaned throughout it that they wanted to play football). We did have a basketball team who were actually quite good, but that might also be to do with the fact that not many schools play basketball in north-west England. I think that's about it, cricket at my school was pretty much non-existant, not a problem for me because I found it the dullest sport in the whole world. Oh...and I think we may have had a swimming team.
FIVES
WINCHESTER FIVES.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fives
At my high school
We played the usual football, cricket, rugby, hockey and tennis. But we also played basketball, Australian rules football, badminton and all the track and field stuff.
I think the Aussie rules football can be explained by the large proportion of Australian teachers in our P.E. department. There's been an influx of them into the British schooling system of late.