What is a Sport?

The question that everyone is always asking each other when talking about sports is always, what makes a sport a sport? In my opinion, a sport is anything that takes skill, practice, and determination, which excludes chess. Now the textbook definition for a sport is "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment", and this means that sports like baseball, football, track, soccer, basketball, and tennis qualify for this definition, but these are mostly mainstream sports anyways. Now, another argument is that a sport needs to include a ball, but this is not true with many sports, and the sports that do not use a ball still require the same amount of skill and determination as those with a ball. The world of sports is vast and eccentric, but there needs to be a fine line drawn between what is a sport, and what is a hobby.

Cheerleading, in my opinion, takes skill and physical exertion, but I do not think of it as a sport. Many people will put up a decent argument for the sake of cheerleading, but cheerleading shouldn't be thought of as the girls on the sidelines at the football game. Cheerleaders should have their own competitive league competing against other cheer teams, and they should create some sort of point system if they would ever want to be thought of as a sport. I imagine cheerleading is a very difficult thing to do, and they should get more respect for what they do, and not just be thought of as girls on the sidelines. The Olympics is a televised event that happens every 4 years, and has winter and summer events, and in the Olympics, Ping Pong, curling, and many others were allowed into the Olympics. Although the Olympics admitted these to be events in their games, I see ping pong as a hobby and Curling as big joke. Those are some of my opinions on non-sports.

Now I can't name all of the sports in the world, but mostly anything involving a ball is a sport, and even swimming competitively is considered as a sport. Swimming can also be seen as a hobby, but it takes a large amount of skill to competitively swim against others. Another crossover hobby/sport is golf, which takes incredible skill to play professionally, but also can be played at your local golf course with some of your pals in the summer. Chess is more of a hobby that takes a lot of mental knowledge and patience, but it does not have any physical exertion. According to the internet Croquet is a sport, but I do not believe that because I think it is more a hobby that you play at a party with friends, and you mostly just hit the balls as hard as you can, and then quit. The world of sports is vast and eccentric, but there needs to be a fine line drawn between what is a sport, and what is a hobby.