Why not watch a former Division I quarterback throw a paper airplane this Friday?
Summer is a silly time for sports. Three of the major four men’s professional leagues — NBA, NHL and NFL — are out of season. There’s no college football either. Baseball is a summer constant and the length of its regular season generally diminishes the feeling that you actually have to pay attention in July. The World Cup happened (but is now over) and NBA fans (finally) discovered the WNBA, so that’s been good. Mostly, though, summer is a time to get into the truly niche sports. The sports that, well, might be a stretch to call a sport.
Much like the hot dog eating contest on July 4, there’s another summer event this Friday that can loosely, generously (it involves a former starting quarterback at Cal!), but still probably shouldn’t be called a sport: paper airplane throwing. It has world records and everything.
This Friday, at the Pomeroy Sports (so it must be a sport) Centre, “The Paper Airplane Guy” (John Collins) and “The Arm” (aforementioned former Cal quarterback Joe Ayoob) will attempt to break their own world record in front of a “Senior Paper Airplane Correspondent” (six-year-old Parker Andrews, Collins’ No. 1 fan) and everyone/anyone who tunes into the Facebook Live stream.
It will all go down in Fort St. John, Canada (home of Parker), as this week continues to see top athletes sent north of the border for the amusement and entertainment of fans. (Travel site Orbitz is the San Antonio Spurs in this analogy, only without the potentially petty motivations. Also Collins and Ayoob actually want to go and have not spent months leaking shady things about Orbitz. So, really, it’s not a good analogy. Still, the paper airplane event is happening in Canada.)
Like all sports that involve more skill than you would think, paper airplane throwing is a highly regulated affair. There are certain Guinness world record guidelines (partially written by Andy Chipling, the “Leading Authority on Paper Airplanes” who will also be providing on-air commentary this Friday). The most important detail, however, is the lack of rules surrounding the number of people involved with the throw. You can, it turns out, works as a team and recruit, say, a former college football quarterback to throw your expertly folded paper airplane, as Collins did.
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Collins and Ayoob are a team and have competed together, folding and throwing, for almost a decade, most notably setting the Guinness Book World Record for longest paper airplane throw in 2012.
Four years ago, the “paper plane aircraft” traveled 226 feet 10 inches and they now, per Orbitz, believe they can beat that by 10-20 feet. They will have 10 tries to do so and arrived three days early to practice and “set optimal temperature and air flow conditions at the Sports Centre.”
You can watch it all — because what else is happening at 11:45 a.m. ET on a Friday in sports? — over on Orbitz Facebook page.
After which, please feel free to return your regularly scheduled summer sports programming. Maybe watch some baseball or turn on the WNBA. Or just get really, really into competitive paper airplane throwing. Sky’s the limit.