A Sport or not a Sport

[+Too Tall John]

American Heritage Dictionary HOBBY (hŏb'ē)

n. pl. hob·bies

An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.

 

American Heritage Dictionary - SPORT (spôrt, spōrt)

n.

 

- Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.

- An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.

- An active pastime; recreation.

Hmm... as the definition of hobby is "an activity of interest," any sport could be your hobby. Since a sport can fall under the definition of a hobby, and geocaching falls under the definition of a sport as well (physical activity governed by rules), it is, according to the dictionary, both.

 

They ain't mutually exclusive, after all.

[knowschad]

Dave Ulmer, Wikipedia:

As early as June 12, only six weeks after his invention, Ulmer wrote, “You really don't see the problems with a sport until you get deeply involved in it…”

 

Frustrated, on June 17, the inventor of geocaching wrote, “OK, OK. I Give Up! All development on the sport of geocaching should cease.”

 

According to Ulmer his log was removed because they were his political views. He was later banned from the Groundspeak forums.

[+simpjkee]

I don't care if it is a "sport" or not. I love it and I enjoy it. I'll let you guys decide if it's a sport or not.

[+edscott]

 

 

Sounds like a sport to me.

 

It's at least as much a sport as skiing, fishing, hiking, orienteering, mountain biking, etc...

 

 

I do Orienteering and Geocaching. The physical and skill level requirements for geocaching don't really compare to those needed to compete in orienteering. To make geocaching competitive like orienteering it would go something like this.

 

Place 10 caches in a thousand acres of forest. Send out a cacher every two minutes to find all 10 in a particular order. One DNF voids your run. Out for over three hours and you are disqualified. You will need to be able to run at full speed, off trail through the woods, while reading your GPS and selecting the best route to the coordinates of the next cache. Winning time should be about an hour. At the end of the day the caches are all picked up and used again the next weekend in a new area. There are Orienteering runs a couple times a month in your area. You really should attend one.. try an Orange course which is designed for a 16 yr old to do in about 45 minutes... to get the flavor of the sport.