‘For The Win’ on Netflix Sparks Joy By Embracing The “Greatest Sports You’ve Never Heard Of” (Like Flaming Tetherball!)

Sports and fitness are supposed to be fun. It can be easy to be forget that, though. Professional and collegiate spectator sports are big business, and as fans we often spend more time thinking about contractual issues, stadium deals or rebuilding efforts than we do enjoying the actual play on the field. Personal fitness, meanwhile, can end up a drudge of treadmills and weight machines — a joyless exercise in repetition.

Recapturing the childlike glee of sports is a major focus of For The Win, an eight-episode reality series available on Netflix. Hosted by Brodie Smith, a collegiate and professional Ultimate Frisbee champion — yes, that’s a real thing — and YouTube frisbee trick-shot star, the series travels around the country turning the camera on what Smith calls “the greatest sports you’ve never heard of.”

Carrying the bro-ed out enthusiasm of an upperclassman giving campus tours to incoming college freshman, Smith makes it hard not to get on board with what he’s trying to do. He bellows triumphantly the first time he succeeds at a new activity. There’s a lot of high-fives and backslapping bear hugs doled out to people he’s just met, and you start to see how this camera-friendly human golden retriever has turned frisbee trick shots into a full-time living.

There’s quite a range of sports for him to profile, too. Each episode finds Smith in a new location, jumping through three or four obscure pursuits in the span of a tight 20-minute runtime. The athletes he meets everyday people, for the most part, but the ebullient host treats each one as though he’s meeting Tom Brady or Serena Williams. With the quick pace of on-location shooting and unabashed embrace of his subjects, it’s not far off from the vibe of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, but with backyard athletics standing in for burgers and tacos. And, much like I’d spend an episode of Triple-D thinking I’d like to try the restaurants, I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of these sports look like they’d be a blast to try. (I found myself briefly considering an online purchase of a $400 “extreme” pogo stick, but figured it wouldn’t be any good to me if my wife broke my kneecaps.)

There’s a few almost-mainstream sports in the mix — curling, table tennis and the recently-booming axe-throwing make appearances — but the real highlights of the show are the sports that were, in many cases, simply dreamt up by a group of friends for their own enjoyment. Intramural “Battleship” sees teams of college students canoeing in an indoor pool, trying to sink their opponents by hurling pails of water at each other. A form of polo is played on fixed-gear bikes on an outdoor basketball court. There’s soccer golf and soccer billiards, archery “tag” (think paintball, but with arrows), underwater hockey and collegiate Quidditch. There’s sports with special equipment – slacklining, flyboarding (essentially water-powered jet-packs, but on your feet), and landsailing – tearing across beaches in a buggy pulled by a massive kite.

Then there’s flaming tetherball. Probably the most outlandish of the sports Smith profiles is on a Seattle-area back lot where competitors — thankfully clad in heavy protective gear — swat at tethers bearing flaming rolls of toilet paper with tennis rackets. Apparently, they enlighten us, the target being on fire makes depth perception a challenge. (I was willing to consider it difficult even before knowing this.)

It could be easy to dismiss Smith, with his smiling surfer bro vibe and persistent happy hollering, as nothing more than a goofy jock. Taken as a whole, though, his show can be oddly inspiring. Much in the same way that Guy Fieri’s never appeared to dislike a bite of food on his show, Smith never condescends to his subjects, no matter how silly their sport might seem. He embraces the moment, and listens dutifully as they teach him their unusual pastimes.

“It’s very difficult to go and try something for the first time and be good right away… but with anything, enough practice and you get decent,” he notes, after clumsily failing an early attempt at one activity. “That’s what this is all about, going out and trying unique things you’ve never tried before.” His subjects are equally upbeat. They’ve found things that bring them joy, to steal a line from reality television’s current zeitgeist champ, Marie Kondo. “You’ll never meet a mean unicyclist. All of us are happy,” one man declares after riding his single-wheel conveyance on a wooded trail.

For The Win may not have had staying power — only one season was produced — but it’s an uplifting two and a half hours of fun, something to perk you up if you find that you’ve become bored with how you’re staying active right now. Pick a new activity, and as Smith says, “Find yourself a good teacher, become a sponge, soak up all the knowledge.”

I’m still thinking about getting that pogo stick.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Stream For The Win on Netflix