As pulse-pounding as racquetball is, for some reason on a rainy Tuesday it just wasn’t exciting enough for me and my friend Zach. On this fateful day, we had to go and create Full-Contact Racquetball instead. Full-Contact Racquetball is played similarly to normal racquetball, except that the defense (that is, the player who just hit the ball) is allowed to get in the way of the offense (the player who’s about to hit the ball), and can do everything in his power to screw up the offense without actually touching either the offense or the ball (though piercing, incoherent screams help oodles). The offense, on the other hand, has to actually get to the freaking ball so they’re allowed to push or hit the defense away if necessary. After 30 minutes and 31 broken bones’ worth of this game, we realized that if we were gonna take this game seriously, we’d need a referee, medical coverage and about 16 cheerleaders.

I wasn’t joking about that medical coverage (or the cheerleaders, come to think of it). I spent the next three days in Pomona Valley Medical Center, where I had plenty of time to reflect on why exactly I had ended up in a full-body cast. Maybe it’s that human need to take a normal, respected sport and make it completely insane.

This is how the twin face-crushing activities of skateboarding and skiing spawned the backbreaking bastard child that is snowboarding. This is also how the esteemed game of caps originated from basketball and beer drinking (I’d hate to be those first guys that tried to play with an actual basketball). Not that caps is all that extreme, I really just needed an excuse to work it into another story (so far the tally’s at 34!).

At any rate, these days you don’t need a Colorado mountain range to enjoy an extreme sport anymore. No, these days you can turn anything into an extreme sport with a few modifications. Hell, last year my sponsor group invented Extreme Spoons, which is basically like the regular card game of spoons but with a few key modifications. Being towards the beginning of freshman year, when Gateway boxes lined the halls and sponcest was still a bad idea, we had the idea to play in the middle of the hall. The game progressed as usual, with cards being passed along until someone got four of a kind. At this point the player in question would grab a spoon from the middle; but, being extreme, the spoons were not in the middle of the group; instead, they were fiendishly placed at either end of the hall, surrounded by walls of boxes, pits of styrofoam and probably a couple of pissed-off rats. Upon getting four of a kind, the player would get up and begin running the obstacle course, and of course the second he jumped up, everyone else would follow suit. So basically we had a bunch of horny teenagers running through boxes towards the coveted plastic spoons — the kicker was, you never knew how many spoons were at either end of the hall, so groups would often have to charge back and forth tripping over people and rodents trying to find the last piece of plastic goodness. Yes, we were very, very bored.

This little anecdote just goes to show you how easy it is to invent your own extreme sport (and incidentally, how easy it is to lose one’s top layer of skin from one’s foot). Here’s another idea: Double Jeopardy Arm-Wrestling. In this breathtaking event, the competitors, whose arms are tethered together, must best each other while being chased by a horde of rabid Dobermans.

Since the competitors are connected at the arm, one cannot let the other fall mercy to the dogs, though he must remain cunning enough to find an open opportunity to win the actual arm-wrestle. The game has turned from your average run-of-the-mill blah-fest into a deadly orchestra of diplomacy and pain that’s fun for all ages.

If you can’t find a bloodthirsty pack of Dobermans on short notice, you could opt instead for Patty-Cake Circle of Death, which is played on a tilting surface above a shark-infested pool. The players must simultaneously develop hardcore freestyle rhymes while attempting to push the opponent into the drink using only his palms and deft rhyming scheme. Alternately, just imagine the fun of Extreme Monopoly! In this edge-of-your-seat adrenaline rush, players can choose whether or not to pay their rent. If they decide against it, the two players involved engage in fisticuffs to determine who ends up with the money! And while these two are busy, the others are perfectly free to steal their money and property! Just imagine the chaos that will ensue when people begin to play dishonestly…! You know, that actually really doesn’t sound any different from how I usually play. OK, say we add a time bomb or something, that might be better.

Anyway, these are all great ideas, but I’m sure you, dear reader, can come up with even better ones. In fact, I’ll stake my reputation (what little of it I have left) on this: if you can come up with a good idea for an "extreme sport", email me at cwm02000@pomona.edu, tell me how it’s played (bonus points if you actually play it). I’ll print the best submissions in a future story, and yes, I will probably give you credit. Get out there and invent!