The human desire for play is unquenchable. It is found in every culture and across the ages. Even in societies that shun it, it emerges like a weed through the concrete.

An excellent adventure of the mind is to design your own sport, whether it be a team sport or an individual sport. Sports are such a deeply popular part of our culture that practically any stranger on the street could list the names of a half dozen sports and explain at least the main objectives and basic rules of each of them. They are exciting to watch, fun to take part in, and interesting to talk about or argue over. It seems humans, as a species, love to play, love to compete, and love to conquer. Whether sports are a proxy for warfare, a way to practice necessarily survival skills, or simply natural tests of prowess against prowess, the desire to engage in them seems somehow innate.

It is fascinating to consider that each and every sport had an actual beginning⏤a day or time when an individual or group of individuals starting playing it and creating together the basic rules and guiding principles of that sport. That fact is a wonderful reminder that there are no real limits to the things that can be created. It’s all just a matter of letting the imagination roam freely. 

When thinking about your own sport, consider some general approaches that have arisen over and over in various sports:

  • Fighting for possession of a ball (or other small object), with the ultimate goal of advancing this ball/object into a scoring area (for example, an end zone) or passing it into or through a scoring object (for example, a hoop, goal, cup, etc.).
  • Hitting a ball past or through defenders in order to advance players towards a base or goal.
  • Exchanging a ball (volleying) between opponents or teams with the intention of causing the opponent to break the volley.
  • Performing a skill or skill set faster, more accurately, with better strategy, or to a higher degree of consistency than an opponent.

Remember that your sport can be athletic and physical or purely mental and academic. It can involve an object, such as a ball, or no object at all. You can restrict the use of a body part, the way soccer forbids the use of arms, or go entirely virtual, the way e-sports teams compete virtually in video games. Whether you invent a robot sword fighting league or life-size chess crossed with arm wrestling, let your imagination take the lead. 

To add a dash of fun to the creative process, imagine that your sport will be used to decide the outcome of international disagreements.

Copyright 2023 Kesel Wilson (entirely, 100% human-created)

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