Fátima Reyes, Grade 11
UWC Costa Rica
I think that if there is one aspect of our childhood we can all identify with, one that we all share beyond languages, cultures, and generations, it must be the game of tag. Some of my fondest childhood memories can be traced back to recess time at school, or a nice Saturday morning with my cousins, running after, laughing and teasing each other as we all avoided the tagger. Whether it was a McDonald’s playground or my grandmother’s house, we always found a way to come back to the classic game. Of course, I never thought of tag as anything beyond a childish way to kill time and get some exercise. As soon as I transitioned into my teenage years, and my friends and cousins did the same, tag became a thing of the past. None of us had the energy nor the drive to chase each other around anymore. Thankfully, not everyone felt the same way.
No more than a couple of weeks ago, my brother and I were ranking the dumbest sports in the world, as classified by our non-athletic minds and bodies. “Curling is really up on the list,” he said while we watched a video of the absurd ice-sweeping sport. “Tug of war is played competitively, so I think that wins” I responded. We soon abandoned our discussion and moved on to arguably more important topics. The YouTube algorithm, on the other hand, decided it was not yet time to give it up and, a few days later, I found myself watching the finale of the World Chase Tag championship. Thinking it was usable material for a little inside joke, I sent the eight-minute match to my brother, arguing that I had officially found our winner, and finally terminating the subject. Or, so I thought.
Fast forward for two or three days, and I am suddenly a World Chase Tag expert. Before I could even realize it, I was already able to differentiate every set piece on the Quad (the arena in which the game takes place), from the mountain to the ridge and, my personal favorite, the sisters. I became able to appreciate the tactics behind jacking or juking that the evader uses to mislead the chaser. I found myself genuinely rooting for the various teams and enjoying the suspense of the 2019 final in which United, a team I had grown fond of, was crowned World Champion. The fast pace of the matches, the simplicity of the game, the novelty, and, perhaps most importantly, its relatability made me quickly fall in love with what, I must admit, is quite a dumb sport.
The rules of WCT are basically identical to those of your playground games. Its creators, Christian and Damien Devaux, presented in 2011 a very simple premise. You have two players, a chaser and an evader, going after each other in an arena filled with classic parkour-like obstacles. That’s it, no over-complicated rules or requirements. Today, WCT recognizes five different game styles that distinguish each other based on the duration of the matches, number of players, and other minor variables. My favorite, nonetheless, remains the good-old Chase-Off. In this modality, two teams of usually five players each face off in a classic Chase Tag match. Each match consists of a predetermined number of chases (usually 16), and on each, there is one chaser and one evader. A team gets the point if their evader successfully avoids being tagged by the chaser for the entire duration of the chase (usually 20 seconds). The team with the most points once all chases are played is declared the winner.
As silly as it may sound, Chase Tag is a very demanding sport. Athletes are usually parkour experts that must be able to move quickly and lightly across the Quad, combining these skills with those of gymnastics, freerunning, and Ninja Warriors. It has also gained increasing popularity worldwide, with 19 affiliated spaces in all continents except Africa. World Chase Tag’s main events have been broadcasted by various TV networks, including Fox Sports, ESPN, and BBC, and have received over 375 million online viewers.
Chase Tag might not yet be a mainstream sport, and perhaps it will never be. To me, however, that is part of its charm. As WCT keeps growing, I hope it reaches more and more people from all over the world and, just like its childhood equal, transcend genders, regions, and age groups.
No more than a couple of weeks ago, my brother and I were ranking the dumbest sports in the world, as classified by our non-athletic minds and bodies. “Curling is really up on the list,” he said while we watched a video of the absurd ice-sweeping sport. “Tug of war is played competitively, so I think that wins” I responded. We soon abandoned our discussion and moved on to arguably more important topics. The YouTube algorithm, on the other hand, decided it was not yet time to give it up and, a few days later, I found myself watching the finale of the World Chase Tag championship. Thinking it was usable material for a little inside joke, I sent the eight-minute match to my brother, arguing that I had officially found our winner, and finally terminating the subject. Or, so I thought.
Fast forward for two or three days, and I am suddenly a World Chase Tag expert. Before I could even realize it, I was already able to differentiate every set piece on the Quad (the arena in which the game takes place), from the mountain to the ridge and, my personal favorite, the sisters. I became able to appreciate the tactics behind jacking or juking that the evader uses to mislead the chaser. I found myself genuinely rooting for the various teams and enjoying the suspense of the 2019 final in which United, a team I had grown fond of, was crowned World Champion. The fast pace of the matches, the simplicity of the game, the novelty, and, perhaps most importantly, its relatability made me quickly fall in love with what, I must admit, is quite a dumb sport.
The rules of WCT are basically identical to those of your playground games. Its creators, Christian and Damien Devaux, presented in 2011 a very simple premise. You have two players, a chaser and an evader, going after each other in an arena filled with classic parkour-like obstacles. That’s it, no over-complicated rules or requirements. Today, WCT recognizes five different game styles that distinguish each other based on the duration of the matches, number of players, and other minor variables. My favorite, nonetheless, remains the good-old Chase-Off. In this modality, two teams of usually five players each face off in a classic Chase Tag match. Each match consists of a predetermined number of chases (usually 16), and on each, there is one chaser and one evader. A team gets the point if their evader successfully avoids being tagged by the chaser for the entire duration of the chase (usually 20 seconds). The team with the most points once all chases are played is declared the winner.
As silly as it may sound, Chase Tag is a very demanding sport. Athletes are usually parkour experts that must be able to move quickly and lightly across the Quad, combining these skills with those of gymnastics, freerunning, and Ninja Warriors. It has also gained increasing popularity worldwide, with 19 affiliated spaces in all continents except Africa. World Chase Tag’s main events have been broadcasted by various TV networks, including Fox Sports, ESPN, and BBC, and have received over 375 million online viewers.
Chase Tag might not yet be a mainstream sport, and perhaps it will never be. To me, however, that is part of its charm. As WCT keeps growing, I hope it reaches more and more people from all over the world and, just like its childhood equal, transcend genders, regions, and age groups.
Image Citation: https://bit.ly/2P6bv95
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www.unitedworldwide.co