Common places to extreme iron are on top of mountains and statues, but the sport allows for its participants to be creative. It can also been done while in motion, for those up for a greater challenge. Some athletes iron while water skiing or snowboarding. There have been attempts to move the sport into the area of bungee jumping, but there have been difficulties working out the logistics.

Some challenges of the sport include carrying the ironing board, iron and clothes to the desired destination. Creating a set-up once there can also prove tricky. When the sport is done in motion, creative measures must be taken in order to secure the board.

Shaw and a group of friends won the only World Championship in extreme ironing in 2002. While the popularity of the sport has declined since its boom in the early 2000s, now is the time to partake. Shaw recently came out of retirement and is again promoting the sport.

Those looking to get into the sport can join the German Extreme Ironing Section (GEIS) or Extreme Ironing International. However, both of those groups are based out of Germany, and the U.S. does not have an organization for extreme ironing. College students would have to travel to De Montfort University in the United Kingdom to participate, as it is the only university in the world to have recognized extreme ironing as an official sport of the school.

Extreme ironing may be unconventional, but it does provide entertainment and allow for creative multitasking.

Gordon wanted to take the unrealistic abilities of athletes in video games, such as extreme jumping and hitting capabilities, and make them attainable for real life athletes. Gordon brought his idea to producer Mike Tollin, who after much persuasion from Gordon, became a supporter of the game.

The SlamBall court resembles a basketball court in the sense that it has a hoop at each end. However, this court has four in-ground trampolines assembled at the base of each hoop and a padded springboard running in between them. An 8-foot Plexiglass wall, much like the enclosure of a hockey rink, surrounds the entire court.

A SlamBall team is composed of an eight or nine man roster. Four players from each team are allowed on the court at any given time. Substitutions can be made as frequently as necessary and are made during the play of the game as in hockey. The game has three positions: handler, gunner and stopper. The handler works much like a basketball point guard in the sense that he is mainly in control of the ball and offensive plays. The gunner’s main focus is to attack the basket and score. The stopper is the main defensive player who uses his body to block the other team’s gunner. You can see some Slamball highlights here.

Throughout the game’s history, eight professional United States teams were formed: Rumble, Mob, Riders, Slashers, Diablos, Bouncers, Steal and Bandits. Two of the teams, Riders and Diablos, disbanded after the 2003 season, and Steal changed its name to Maulers. All of these teams are based in Los Angeles, California and compete against each other in regular season and post-season games. Ken Carter, famously known as Coach Carter, was the coach of Rumble for all three seasons. Under his direction, Rumble finished first in all three regular seasons, won the championship in 2002, made the semi-finals in 2003 and made the finals in 2008.

Photo courtesy of YouTube.

A roller derby tournament consists of two 30-minute halves, called jams. Each team has nine players, with eight of those players being blockers and the ninth being a jammer. The role of a jammer is to pass as many members of the opposing team by the end of the jam. Each person passed is a point for the jammer’s team. The blockers work together to prevent the opposite team’s jammer from passing them. Each player chooses his or her own derby name, which is typically a pun, such as Peter Babriel, Estee Slaughter or Dizzy Bennet, all of whom are members of the Kansas City derby league.

Physical contact between players is limited to a player’s hips, rear and shoulders. Players wear helmets, kneepads, elbow pads and wrist guards to prevent injury if they fall onto the hard surface of the track. For teams in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA), the derby track is completely flat with no banking. Using elbows, purposefully tripping other players and passing out of bounds are all illegal moves in roller derby. Any player found to be using illegal moves can be sent to the penalty box outside of the rink.

Men originally were involved as referees and officials in women’s roller derby. It has been only been recently that men’s teams have formed in the United States. Some women’s derby teams have publicly objected to the formation of men’s teams. Women’s teams have long dominated roller derby, and there is fear that men’s teams will pull attention away from the women’s teams.

The Men’s Roller Derby Association was established in 2007, and since then, men’s roller derby has gotten significantly more press than women’s derby. Many women’s teams have opened tryouts and positions on teams to men in order to create more unity between men and women interested in roller derby.

The local roller derby women’s league is called the Kansas City Warriors and consists of four teams: The Black Eye Susans, the Dreadnought Dorothys, the Victory Vixens and the Kansas City Warriors traveling team. The Kansas City Warriors won this year’s Division 2 WFTDA International Playoffs in Cleveland, Ohio and will compete again Nov. 8 in St. Paul, Minnesota for the championship title. Tryouts for the league are being held on Nov. 10-11 and 17-18.

The game of futsal originated in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s where it was played as a much smaller version of soccer to make up for the lack of space for full-sized soccer fields. Futsal was and is a way for people of all ages to enjoy a form of organized soccer in a much smaller space.

Although futsal originated as an alternative to full field soccer, many of the world’s greatest players started their soccer careers playing futsal. The likes of Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi and Ronaldo all credit futsal as the reason their skill improved so significantly as children.

The basic rules of futsal are relatively straightforward. All rules of regular soccer apply, but the ball is one size smaller than usual and weighted, and there are five players for each side with unlimited substitutions available. The games are much shorter than full soccer, with only 24-minute halves.

Although futsal originated in the streets of Brazil, many young soccer players in the United States now play futsal at the club level, usually up until the age of about 18, in order to become better players.

Here in Kansas City, Heartland Futsal is an organization that local players use, primarily to play almost every weekend during the winter months.

While the international futsal scene is not huge, there is a Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) affiliated world cup for futsal every four years, with Spain, Brazil and Portugal being the “heavyweights” of that competition.

A current star that plays futsal in the Portuguese futsal leagues is Ricardinho. Here, you can see the amount of skill that is showcased by Ricardinho.