What sport do american kids typically play in the street/park?

36 comments

1. Pick-up games of basketball (it’s not uncommon to have a personal basketball hoop in your driveway and for there to be basketball courts at parks), soccer, tag (if you can consider that a sport, it’s a game they play though), some form of flag football, *less* common but street hockey used to be a thing back in the day.

2. We used to play two hand touch football mostly. In the street. If a car was coming, you’d yell car and everyone would move out of the way. We also played soccer and street hockey. We tried baseball once with one of those sponge balls and bats, like Nerf but a bit harder. It didn’t work so well. The hall kept going in this old crank’s yard and all he did was complain. Real ass. We’d go to the park that had baseball diamonds for that

3. football usually.

4. We had a mowed field across the street from my childhood home, there we played kickball, softball, and football on it. When the nearby lake froze in the winter, there would be ice hockey. All of this was informal and impromptu with friends.

5. growing up, I played baseball, football and street hockey

6. I see basketball most. That wasn’t a thing for me growing up at all.

7. Basketball, Football, and Baseball

8. Basketball

9. Street hockey, soccer, basketball, wall ball (😫 oh the welts), four square, football, ghosts in the graveyard, cops and robbers,

10. Very region or even neighborhood dependent. When I was 12-14 we all played roller hockey. One neighborhood over they all played street baseball. One more over and they played football (American soccer). One more, basketball. Ethnicity of different neighborhoods seemed to influence the sports as well. There was quite a bit of diversity in the region.

11. wiffle ball, street hockey, basketball, touch football, skateboarding, soccer (super popular where I live)

12. Basketball. I don’t really remember there being play of much else.

13. Basketball, football and baseball

14. Football and basketball, sometimes baseball depending.

15. Soccer and basketball at most parks. Some parks have baseball/softball fields specifically set up.

16. Lacrosse, baseball, and basketball mostly.

17. Cops and robbers.

18. For me it was soccer, football, kickball and basketball. My family is a soccer family

19. Football, street hockey, frisbee, red rover, general dumbassery

20. Basketball is probably the most common around here because it’s easy to find a court in a schoolyard or at a park. Handball is (was?) pretty popular too.

21. We would play a game where one person was carrying the football and everyone else had to hit them. Once they get tackled, the ball gets thrown up and someone else becomes the ball carrier.

    The name isn’t really PC anymore, but I heard someone call it “kill the person with the ball” recently

22. Basketball, kickball, soccer, touch football (American football with no tackling, you touch the person with both hands to “tackle” them).

23. Football, basketball, soccer, street hockey

24. There’s a lot of basketball where I’m from. Football is probably the most popular organized sport.

25. Basketball or American football.

26. Basketball or street hockey when I was a kid.

27. Street hockey and basketball (Ohio)

28. Basketball and football. A lot of the times you see a basketball hoop right next to the street and the kids play in the road. While playing football my friends played two-handed touch in the street but tackle in the grass.

29. Where I am, pickup baseball is big.

    Also where I am, every other house in the “nice” neighborhoods has a high quality basketball hoop (glass backboard, adjustable height, breakaway rims) and I never see anyone using them.

30. If you watch movies it’s stickball even though my suburban ass has never seen a game in real life

31. Lots of people with kids have basketball hoops in their driveway or attached to their house/garage. Other than that, playing street hockey with a rubber ball is pretty popular at least where I come from.

32. Football may not be popular among adults, but it’s a massive game at the youth level

33. I don’t see kids nowadays playing outside much, at least not in my neighborhood, but I usually see them playing basketball when they are out.

34. Just about every park in NYC has a basketball court so I’d go with that, but soccer probably comes in second, especially with the Latino and black immigrant population. There are also a lot of parks with baseball fields, but no one is really playing pick-up baseball games these day. When being used the fields typically have youth teams playing or some kind of organized rec league. It also requires a lot more players than basketball and soccer so that’s gotta be why it’s not common to see pick-up baseball games.

35. I’ve seen mostly basketball

36. We played kickball, manhunt, and capture the flag a lot. Maybe wiffle ball