Senior Grace Duff – Polocrosse
Polocrosse is a team sport that combines lacrosse and polo on horseback. With a total of six members, only three are allowed on the field at a time. On the field, there is one designated person who has the ability to score for their team, one person whose job is to guard the goal and one person whose job is to always be positioned in the middle of the field.
At age seven, Duff was introduced to polocrosse at Pony Club, an organization that educates children about horses and teaches them how to ride properly. After discovering an interest in this sport, Duff later decided to leave Pony Club behind in order for her to be able to learn the game she has come to love.
“I dropped everything else after I found out about it,” Duff said. “I used to do events like show jumping and things like that, and I thought that was lame after I starting playing polocrosse.”
In order to compete in most competitions, Duff has to go out of state. She has traveled to Florida, Alabama and Maryland for competitions.
“They’re definitely intense,” Duff said.
Senior Jesse Singh – Yo-Yo
For the past five years, Singh has been yo-yoing competitively after stumbling across this interest on YouTube.
Yo-yo competitions work by giving judges two clickers, one positive clicker and one negative clicker. Each time a contestant does a trick they will receive a positive click, and each time the contestant makes a mistake they will receive a negative click.
This portion of the judging covers the technical evaluation. The performance evaluation is judged and determined by the contestant’s stage use, music choice and how well the choreography fits with the song they have chosen.
“The end goal is that you want to entertain the crowd, and that’s what I try to do,” Singh said.
Singh has been in a total of 15 competitions, and in 2015, he won second place in the amateur division of the International Yo-yo Contest in Disneyland.
“[Yo-yoing] is really creative and innovative,” Singh said. “Creating tricks is what’s really fun to me: creating tricks that people have never done before and stumbling across tricks that people have never thought. In the long run, you kind of inspire other people to do tricks.”
Sophomore August Russell – Paddle Boarding
Russell was first introduced to paddle boarding through his dad, who was a paddle board distributor at the time.
Paddle board competitions start out on land and begin when the whistle blows. The contestants then run into the water against 19 other racers. The contestants continue to paddle out into the water until they reach the water buoys where the contestants attempt to paddle around it while trying to complete the course and finish before other competitors.
Russell has competed in a total of 10 competitions in Miami, and he has won three in his life.
“There was a lot of fundraising that was in it, actually, for charities, autistic funds and for the Make a Wish Foundation,” Russell said. “That was a big part of [my racing]. It was kind of like an idol for my dad. Since he was a paddle boarder, I wanted to be like him.”
Senior Ross Bryant – Krav Maga
Krav Maga is an Israeli martial art that is a military self-defense and fighting system. Krav Maga consists of combinations of techniques from boxing, karate, judo and wrestling, along with realistic fighting training.
Bryant learned about this sport through a friend and has been practicing it for nine months.
“I thought it looked pretty fun, so I thought I’d try it,” Bryant said. “I tried a lot of different sports, and nothing was really that interesting to me, but when I heard about this and started trying it, I really liked it.”
Krav Maga teaches self-defense, with only one goal: survival. It incorporates moves and defense styles that other martial arts are banned from using, due to the fact that they target pressure points and other vulnerable parts of the opponent’s body. In order to see who is the best, people from the same class and ranking will fight each other until time runs out. If you are in a higher class, you fight until your opponent is knocked out.
In the nine months of practicing and learning Krav Maga, Bryant has participated in two matches at Triangle Krav Maga in Durham, leaving the matches with only a few “black eyes.”
“Krav Maga is a “no-rules” fighting. You can do groin kicks, ear rips, eye gouges—whatever you want,” Bryant said. “There is a lot of sparring during the classes, especially [in] the higher classes, so it is mostly like fighting every day.”
– By Sarah Fowler
