Only Americans understand the true fervour and passion of US college sport. For the English sports fan, the enemy might be the Germans, the Argentinians, the other home nations, and, of course, the Australians. Definitely, the Australians. Meanwhile, the Scots traditionally support anyone who is playing England. But US sports teams rarely compete in national competitions. Baseball’s World Series justifies its name by extending the boundaries of the US to Canada. Golf’s Ryder Cup is one exception, but the bi-annual coming together of US golfers to play their European counterparts is something US tour professionals occasionally seem as comfortable with as putting downhill at Augusta.
No, for US sports nuts it is college sport that gets the adrenalin gushing and passions rising. So it’s no surprise that the US National Collegiate Paintball Association competition is a blood-boiling hit. It allows competing state university students to stop shouting at each other and start shooting. Just the way they like it.
The competition itself is as old as paintball in the US. Not surprisingly, the first college paintball club was formed at the United States Military Academy in 1986. In 1994, the first intercollegiate tournament was held at Sherwood Forest in La Porte, Indiana. Former Illinois Senator Barack Obama was no doubt pleased that the University of Illinois was crowned the first national winner in 2000.
In fact, it is was a former University of Illinois student Chris Raehl who co-founded the National Collegiate Paintball Association (NCPA) which now runs the competition. Chris, who began playing paintball with a friend’s church group, set up the NCPA in 2000.
Over the last few years, a growing band of the US’s top universities such as Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have entered the battle to be the top university. Iowa State University Paintball Club is even funded by the University to construct a permanent on-campus paintball field.
The league has a long and short format, which is described as class A and class AA. The national championship for class A is decided in a shoot-off between 12 teams in April, while the class AA has over 100 teams competing on a league basis. Topping the table in the short format rakings for 2008/9 are the University of Texas Mean Green – well you’d expect Texans to be sharp shooters.
If you want to try paintball check out your nearest UK paintball venue. Click here
British driver Jenson Button currently leads the Formula 1 drivers’ championship, but he says some of his best memories of motor sport are from his time kart racing. Like generations of drivers before him, his journey to pole position began in karts.
Long before the champagne sprayed from the podium, cute-faced kids such as Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher were thrashing the life out of karts and no doubt celebrating victories with a drop of fizzy lemonade.
Lewis Hamilton was just ten when he sped to victory in his first British Karting championship in 1993, a triumph he went on to repeat four times. Seven years later the future F1 world drivers’ champion was crowned world karting number one, after gaining maximum points in the European Karting championship. It was this success in karts that made Lewis the only teenager ever to be recruited by a F1 team, when McLaren’s Ron Dennis signed him for their driver development programme.
Seven-time F1 world drivers’ champion, the legendary German Michael Schumacher, was five when he first got behind the wheel of a kart. Michael’s father Ralf reportedly took his son along to the local Kerpen-Horrem karting circuit, after crashing his home-modified pedal kart into a lamp post. Regulations in Germany required drivers to be 14-years-old to get a competitive kart licence. But the resourceful Schumachers swerved around this, by obtaining a licence in Luxembourg in 1981, at the age of 12.
Meander through YouTube for baby-faced clips of future F1 stars and it’s not difficult to see why karting is such a fertile breeding ground for champion speedsters. It has been described as F1 in miniature and on the cheap. Lewis Hamilton certainly looked a consummate professional racer before he was a teenager. Indeed, when Michael Schumacher made a one-off nostalgic return to karts in 2001, the 16-year-old Hamilton finished in seventh place, four places behind Schumacher, who had no hesitation in picking Hamilton out as a future F1 star.
For young guys who hit the winning trail early, such as Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, success in karts teaches them to be as adept at steering through media interviews as hairpin bends. Press interviews, media interest and seeing your picture in the paper quickly becomes a way of life.
Hamilton advises young kids keen on kart racing to approach it with discipline and not to neglect schoolwork. The Motor Sports Association (MSA), which governs kart racing, restricts competition to aged 8s and above, with over 20 kart classes in the UK for eight to 16-year-olds.
How to start karting.
The Association of British Kart Clubs advises not to go out and buy a kart but to try it first. You can find venues at karting nation.
Most karting venues operate with a minimum height restriction, which is usually around 140cm.
Karts racing classes range from 60cc engines for 8 to 12-year-olds and up to 160cc engines for up to 16-year-olds. Want to try go karting? To find your nearest circuit click here
Ropeboarding is a new technical board-sport with more risky variations being developed every day. After mirroring every snowboard and skateboard grab in the book, it has moved on to those with a 180 to 540 “shove it” in and out of the grab (either backside or front side), this made it all the more complicated.
The 360-shove-it-Christ-air is one of the most important tricks. This led the way for variations only dreamed of by vert riders and wake boarders alike. This trick is landed by throwing a 360 shove-it from the feet to either hand while extending torso and legs in “the shape of a crucifix”. Then bringing the board back to your feet before your swing is grounded. There are two main stances. Regular and switch reverse. Regular is with both feet on the board with the rope in-between your legs. Switch reverse is with you lead foot on the other side of the rope.
Taking the slack
The sport of slackline was developed in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s in Yosemite National Park in California; climbers used rest days to walk first on chains, and later on nylon webbing to create a new genre of funambulism – slackline was born.
Both extreme sports will be at the White Air Brighton, Europe’s largest Extreme Sports festival and is on in Brighton from September 18th to 20th. For more details: http://www.whiteair.co.uk/tv
British driver Jenson Button currently leads the Formula 1 drivers’ championship, but he says some of his best memories of motor sport are from his time kart racing. Like generations of drivers before him, his journey to pole position began in 
The Association of British Kart Clubs advises not to go out and buy a kart but to try it first. You can find venues at