Unusual sports have become much more popular at Steinbrenner and many other schools across the country over the past school year. Trap and Skeet, Ping Pong, and Quidditch are just a few of the unusual athletic additions to the club roster that have attracted a lot of popularity and are expecting to expand in the future.
Trap and Skeet, headed by freshman Ryan Ledbetter, has been especially active outside of Steinbrenner. Trap and Skeet, in simple terms, is a sport where individuals shoot clay discs that are projected through the air to score the maximum amount of points possible. Although Trap and Skeet is an individually ranked sport, members of the club train and work together to prepare for competitions, such as the Southern Grand Regional Tournament, where Ledbetter, Christopher Meeks, and Jake Johnson all participated this year. Additionally, Ledbetter qualified for the National Junior Olympics, for which he’ll be going to Colorado Springs later this year.
“The fun thing about trap and skeet is that it builds discipline and respect. Because, obviously, you have to know how to handle a firearm and you also have to be respectful with them.” said Ledbetter,
The Steinbrenner Ping Pong club, headed by senior Talia Rodriguez, had an explosive start at club rush, with over five hundred student sign ups to kick off the year. As a sport that began simply as a family tradition for Talia, the popularity of the club has been surprising.
“Honestly, I haven’t really seen any other schools playing. I believe that we’re the first ones to start like, a club just for ping pong,” said Rodriguez.
The Steinbrenner Quidditch club has experienced similar popularity. Inspired by the Harry Potter book series, Quidditch is a sport similar to soccer, played while “flying” on broomsticks, with three hoops on either end of the playing field and rather complicated rules. Founded by seniors Lilly Shaffer and Jessica Berringer, Steinbrenner’s Quidditch team has held several practices after school, and developed into a very tight knit group of friends.
Unfortunately Quidditch, along with the rest of these clubs, has experienced issues finding competition, simply because the sport doesn’t exist at any other local schools. Club presidents are hopeful, however, that their sports will pick up popularity among local high schools at time goes on.
“I think that as awareness of Quidditch increases that people are going to start creating more clubs, because the main reaction I get from people that aren’t in Quidditch is: ‘Like, from Harry Potter? That’s a real thing?’” said Berringer, “So I think that once like, the League- which is the World Cup- starts to pick up speed and gain recognition that it’s going to become much more common for high schools.”
