My PE Teacher doesn’t believe that Unicycling is a sport I already sent her a link to Unicycling Society Of America’s web site but she still won’t believe me any more proof I can get would be great so I can prove her wrong.
why wouldn’t uni be a sport? is skateboarding a sport? what about biking? Uni is equal or better than those aerobically if that’s what she’s talking about.
If she’s defining sport as “something practiced by a team in competition for points, preferrably with a ball”, you might be out of luck. Or, tell her about uni hockey or uni basketball.
Show her Shaun’s Mact Nada trailer. And the Flip Vid. And the Defect trailer. And the TWNR trailer. Theres a million videos you could show her.
Show her videos, from this site and unicycle.tv, shoe her how theres international meetings, Moab, BUC. Show here how even local riders from their own groups, also, show her this site.
If she wants something ball related, uni hoki, uni basketball, uni polo. theres tons =p
The [THREAD=21073]consensus among unicyclists[/THREAD] is that it is a sport. Based on many thread titles we think it is a sport.
And, of course, RSU is rec.SPORT.unicycling so it has to be a sport.
I like this definition from one of the threads:
Edit: With a thread title like yours, watch out for the Thread Title Police.
Dictionary.com explains a “sport” as this
An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
That sounds pretty good.
This will make her mad but it will be worth it because she hates to be wrong I wonder what she’ll say on Monday.
Your PE teacher is a closed minded idiot. You won’t be able to tell her anything.
UniBrier is trying to tell you that your thread title sucks.
you should tell her that.
I was going to say the same thing but nicely. I am glad you posted first.
I found this while surfing around:
One-wheeled wonders are growing in numbers
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By Cristina Cardoze
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2002-04-10
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Unicycling – the sport of riding a single wheel with pedals and a seat – is gaining popularity all over the world. There are about a million unicyclists in the United States alone. Contrary to popular perceptions, they are not all juggling circus clowns. Most unicyclists are ordinary people who love the challenge of balancing on one wheel.
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No brakes. No gears. No handlebars.
“No problem,” says John Foss, President of the International Unicycling Federation and three-time world champion unicyclist. “Unicycling is not as dangerous as it looks,” he said. “Anyone can learn.”
Unicycling – the sport of riding a single wheel with pedals and a seat – is gaining popularity all over the world. According to Foss, the Internet’s ability to disseminate information about the sport and the rise of innovative disciplines like mountain unicycling, have increased curiosity and awareness.
John Drummond, who started the first and only online unicycle department store three years ago, says that most of his sales are to first-time buyers.
“New unicyclists are our bread and butter,” said Drummond, whose company’s revenues topped $700,000 last year.
Drummond estimates that there are about a million unicyclists in the United States, and they are not all juggling circus clowns. Most unicyclists are ordinary people who love the challenge of balancing on one wheel. They unicycle to stay in shape, socialize, play games, run errands, walk their dogs and commute to work. And their numbers are growing.
Joe Merrill, 38, and David Stone, 35, founded Unatics of New York, the first unicycling club in New York City, about a year ago. The club started with 15 members and has since ballooned to 110 men and women, ranging 5 five to 50 years of age.
“There are times when we get 10 new members a week,” Merrill said.
Unatics of New York meets twice a month by a band shell in Central Park. Members practice skills and ride around the bike paths. Sometimes they try different types of unicycles, including one that spins in the middle, one that has a 46-inch wheel (nicknamed Godzilla) and a few 6-foot-high “giraffes.”
“It’s quite a scene to see 30 unicyclists riding around Central Park,” Merrill said.
The scene is good for recruiting. “There’s always someone that says ‘I want to learn to do that,’” Merrill added.
But learning to ride a unicycle is much harder than mastering a traditional two-wheeler. It takes about two weeks of practice to learn to ride and a few more weeks to do turns and basic tricks. Both Foss and Merrill say the degree of difficulty works against the sport ever gaining mass appeal.
"Most people will look at a unicyclist and say, ‘I could never do that,’ Merrill said, “but there’s a small group of people that say, 'that’s possible, and if he can do it, so can I.”
Merrill learned to ride a unicycle when he was growing up in Maine. His grandfather saw him trying to balance on a single tricycle wheel and got him a unicycle. Merrill fell in love with it. He rode his unicycle through high school and college but stopped when he moved to New York to become a computer networking professional.
Then he met David Stone at their daughters’ gymnastics class. Stone was not easy to miss. He rode his unicycle to the gym with his son in a stroller on one side and his daughter on a skateboard-like contraption in the back.
“I immediately fell in love with it again,” Merrill said. “I said to myself, ‘this is what I’ve been missing all this years.’”
According to Merrill, unicycling is great exercise because you can never stop pedaling. It’s fun, extremely challenging and it’s something most people can’t do.
Merrill and Stone started unicycling together on a regular basis and later formed Unatics of NY. Since then, Merrill’s love of the sport has escalated. He practices at least 90 minutes a day, rides his unicycle to work on sunny mornings and has picked up mountain unicycling, the newest fad in the unicycling world.
Mountain unicycling combines elements of mountain biking and downhill skiing. “You get the same level of excitement as in downhill skiing, but it’s not as dangerous,” Merrill said. On a unicycle, you can go only as fast as you can pedal (about 8 miles an hour), you can’t coast, and if you lose your balance, all you have to do is jump off.
Mountain unicycling is the trend now, but the sport’s evolution is continuing. There are unicycle aficionados all over the world who think there’s no limit to the things that can be done on one wheel.
Clubs in Minnesota, Michigan and Quebec play unicycle basketball. A club in New Orleans focuses on unicycle polo. Unicycle hockey is popular in California and abroad. Australia, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Switzerland and New Zealand have active unicycle hockey teams. Germany has a full-blown unicycle hockey league. And a group of people in England use unicycles instead of flying broomsticks to play Quidditch, the famous Harry Potter sport.
The World Unicycling Championships will be held in Seattle this summer. According to Foss, about 600 unicyclists are expected to attend. The next step is to make unicycling into an Olympic sport.
“After all,” said Merrill, “it’s definitely more fun than curling.”
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Joe Merrill, left, and David Stone founded Unatics of New York, New York City’s first unicycle club, a year ago.
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Alison Devine
bring it to class and have her ride it
Well my thread title may suck but it got you all here
It also got Harper aggrivated. You don’t want an aggrivated Harper.
This thread reminds me of one of Holly’s introductions in the first series of Red Dwarf:
“I am Holly, the ship’s computer, with an IQ of 6000, the same IQ as 6000 PE teachers.”
Which then goes on to remind me of my PE teacher at secondary school (US: High School), who stated that football (US: soccer) “is a game for intelligent men”. If I’d ever taken PE teachers seriously before that, I wouldn’t have been able to afterwards!
if she thinks sports have to be a team a with a ball she is very narrow minded
what about gymnastics or pole vault or javelin those r sports
I wonder if she’s one of the vast majority of teachers who claim that they’re “under paid”. On last night’s “20/20”, teachers readily admitted that they earned $55,000-$85,000 per year; and that’s for only NINE months, with 12 weeks off EVERY YEAR! Hmmm, that yearly total works out to between $1528-$2,300 per week! “Under paid?” At least in HER case, andI’m sure MANY others, they are GROSSLY OVERPAID! 
Don’t worry about trying to prove anything to her. She’s just trying to prove that she’s way manlier than all of her students put together. Your best bet is to agree.
There’s something about high school in particular that seems to attract the worst of the chest-thumping kid kickers. Just remember, you’ll be moving on to the real world, away from school, and she’ll be stuck going to school for the rest of her career, for the grand privilege of pushing kids around!