On those hot summer days, you need a game that keeps you cool and requires as little physical activity as possible. Ladies and Gentlemen, Sports Explained: Air Hockey.
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What happens when you love the sport of hockey, but hate ice and collisions? What happens when you love the constant flow of hockey, but want to play while barely moving? Well, you have two choices, you can watch the Hanson Brothers play some “old time hockey”, or you can step up to your local arcade put a couple coins in the machine and play some Air Hockey.
Now there might be some sticklers out there who say Air Hockey is not a sport, to those naysayers I respond,
What constitutes a sport?
Hand Eye Coordination? Check.
Competition? Check.
Skill? Check.
A World Championship? You better believe it.
Just recently, Beaumont, Texas resident Collin Cummings took home the World Championship. At only 16 years old, he became the youngest player to ever win it all.
We’ve seen a phenom like this come along before.
If you’ve never been to an arcade, the rules of air hockey are simple. There’s a puck, or a thin disc floating on the surface as air seeps through the sides of the playing surface. Each player holds a mallet and pushes the puck back and forth trying to find the goal, or an open slot on the other person’s side.
While it may seem simple, don’t get it confused with other parlor games. You can’t do this in air hockey.
As the popularity began to grow, some tried to capitalize by combining air hockey with another american past time, drinking beer. A shameless ploy.
The purity of the sport however is still in tact. No other sport can pit a 40-year-old grown man against a 16-year-old boy for a World Championship, except Ice Hockey, and maybe this…
But we’ll save break dance fighting for another time.
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Photo Credit: John Kannenberg/flickr