By Angelina Tang
It’s official—the Williamsville East athletic department has announced that East will be adopting New York State’s new school sport, extreme ironing, starting in the winter season of the 2024-2025 school year. The sport will have both varsity and modified teams. Students and staff alike are very excited for this new sport and hope that it will bring new skill sets of the East population to the spotlight and hone these skills through team-building and comradery.
Extreme ironing is exactly what it sounds like—students iron clothing as fast and accurately as possible. Physical presentation of the task is also evaluated in certain events. Students can either act alone in solo events and iron smaller garments, or in team events where a group of students work to iron out a larger garment or piece of fabric. Extreme ironing will also involve panels of state-trained judges at each event in order to standardize the grading of garment smoothness and aesthetic choreography of the act of ironing.
Students will be provided with irons, again, for standardization purposes. They will train in the Health room during their season, practicing on thoroughly wrinkled clothing. As such, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Townsend will be coaching the varsity extreme ironing team. The modified coach has yet to be determined. Mr. Townsend says, “I am very excited for the advent of the extreme ironing sport! I think it’s great for the students and it is a skillset that they can transfer on to their adult lives. It will be my honor to coach this team to state victory.”
Extreme ironing is meant to shed light on the very important skills of being able to iron and take care of garments in teenagers. It is supposed to encourage students to learn these kinds of applicable, real-life skills while building cooperation and interpersonal skills in a team environment. East is excited to bring extreme ironing to its halls, and students are encouraged to approach Mr. Townsend about details even before the end of this school year.
