Global Sports That Are Totally Bonkers: Sepak Takraw

The absence of major sports through the Spring of 2020 has gotten us thinking about the lesser known sports that people from around the world might enjoy, and in-turn also be missing. It turns out that a lot of you are into some weird activities. From wildly dangerous to “how is this even a thing” level bizarre to just hilarious, here are just a few of the world’s endless examples of humanity’s ability to turn anything into a contest and to then tweak that contest for optimal violence or amusement. Today’s entry, the incredible airborne sport of Sepak Takraw.

Sepak Takraw or Inverted Foot-Volleyball

Some sports make this list because they’re strange and trippy, others because they’re extreme and violent and some are just hilarious. This one is pure envy, we need this sport in the U.S. immediately. Part volleyball, part hacky-sack, and part ninja, Sepak Takraw is a game that traces its roots to 15^th century Malaysia. Played throughout South Asia, the sport is essentially a hyper-gymnastic version of hands-free volleyball, played with a smaller ball and a lower net. Things get airborne frequently but remain amazing every time as can be seen by the judge in this photo who is knocked backward by the sheer awesomeness of what he’s seeing.

Like in volleyball, each team gets three opportunities to tap the softball-sized hollow rattan ball before it must be sent back over the net. Players can use their head, torso, legs and feet to send the ball back and forth to one another and over a roughly 5-foot-high net. That description hardly does any justice to the completely bananas acrobatics that take place during matches, which are more reminiscent of martial arts or Luchador wrestlers than anything you’ll see on a volleyball court.

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Say what you will about soccer, but the bicycle kick is downright amazing. Sepak Takraw takes this concept, loads it up on steroids, blasts it with gamma rays and unleashes it to hulk out on an unsuspecting world. On every play, multiple times, the ball is set into the air, a nearby player leaps, flips his feet up over his head to meet the ball in the air, and sends it rocketing over the net for this sport’s version of a spike, before crashing back to the hard playing surface.

The serve in this game is also an unreal feat. Unlike volleyball where the server will toss the ball up into the air to themselves before striking it, Sepak Takraw requires a teammate standing at the end of the net to send a shoulder-high pass that the server then kicks over the net from the back-end of the court. Games are played by three-person teams in best-of-three sets of games up to 21 points.

While the home of Sepak Takraw is still South Asia, the sport is growing globally. Now governed by the International Sepak Takraw Federation, the sport has a toehold on every sports-playing continent, with the ISTAF Superseries and World Cup events acting as the sport’s major championships. And yes, patriots, there is an American team. This video of their performance at the ISTAF SuperSeries is six or so minutes of highlights of them getting scored on in every way possible while committing a nonstop string of bloopers. Hilariously it seems to be the best we’ve got, since the official team is the one that posted it.

Of course, a sport with this much fast moving unpredictable action has its share of dangerous scary moments as well as bloopers and accidental highlights.

This is a seriously day-consuming YouTube rabbit hole to click around in for highlights.

I don’t care if it’s on this continent, I don’t care if it’s in a timezone that allows me to sleep and I don’t care if the commentary is in a language I understand, I need some Sepak Takraw in my sports viewing life immediately. Where’s “The Ocho” when you need it?

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