Women’s sports are fast becoming more and more popular around the world from a record number of viewers at the last FIFA Women’s World Cup to a steadily growing percentage of women climbers on Mount Everest. Naturally, there are more and more female sports enthusiasts starting to engage in various outdoor activities, from soccer to swimming to camping to kayaking, you name it.
KICKiT is a South Korean YouTube channel that showcases just that – young women enjoying a variety of sports and activities and posting for everyone to see and share. Three Yonsei University graduates Kim Seonkyung, Lim Seonyoung, and Ohm Dayoung teamed up in 2019 to film their passion for sports and show it to the world. As the channel’s name suggests, it initially started off as a soccer-centered channel, as all three founding members played soccer in college.
But while the world’s most popular sport remains its main topic of interest, KICKiT has branched out to cover different activities as well, posting vlogs of them engaging in sports like Jiu Jitsu and handball, or going camping and hiking to different places. Whatever activity they’re doing, these three young women are some very interesting characters, and Mappy Hour decided to sit down with them and have a chat about why they branched out to outdoor adventure sports and just how much they enjoy being active outdoors.
You’ve gone beyond soccer and uploaded a bunch of videos about outdoor activities, what motivated you to do so?
Our channel may be centered around soccer, but we also indulge in a lot of different activities, so we wanted to share that side of our lives with the viewers as well. We’ve made a little series about trying out different activities on our channel, and we hope that more and more people can watch us and try out these sports for themselves as well.
What was your most memorable outdoor activity that you’ve vlogged so far?
Camping was a huge one that was left in our memories. It was our first time camping, for all three of us, and it was just great fun getting into the thick of it, pitching tents, cooking, and all that. It wasn’t just about sports, but also about making memories for the three of us, and it’s going to stay with us forever.
If you could choose between a camping trip and a hiking trip, which one would you choose and why?
Now this might differ from person to person.
Seonkyung: I’d say hiking, because once you scale a mountain and reach a summit, you have that sense of achievement and accomplishment. Plus, once you’re done with that, you can rest! Camping is work from the moment you start packing to the second you’re home, and people who enjoy that go camping, that’s the way it is. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy it, but I think I’d choose hiking over camping most of the time.
Seonyoung: Same for me, I think I’d pick hiking, especially if you’re going in a small group. We all have different paces when we hike, and sometimes you have to pull the others forward with you. That pride, that sense of leadership, I think that’s fun in its own way.
Dayoung: I think it’s different depending on what kind of vibe you’re going for. If I want to go for a more ‘healing’ atmosphere, I’d choose camping, but once my leg heals up (Editor’s Note: she tore her ACL a few months ago; right now she’s immensely improved in her recovery, but there’s still a bit left to go), I have this dream of scaling all the famous peaks in Korea, I think that’d be fun.
There might be outdoor enthusiasts who may feel a bit shy or skittish towards actually partaking in outdoor activities. What can be done to make these activities easier to access?
I think the main thing is to have a mindset that says ‘oh, I’m just going to hang out with my friends.’ If you go to a cafe, or go out to eat something good, you’re having fun. The same can apply to outdoor activities. You can just throw on any type of sportswear and treat it like a nice, comfortable day out, then it becomes a lot easier. Now of course, you can’t force someone to go somewhere with you because these leisure activities should be done at your, well, leisure, and of your own accord. But at the same time, you can’t expect to live life without any sort of physical activity, especially with all the health crazes nowadays.
So we think if you have to exercise anyway, why not find a way to do it in a manner as enjoyable as possible? It’s not just about dieting or losing weight, but more about having fun and enjoying yourself while doing these healthy activities. Another way of doing this is starting easy, like for instance, if you’re hiking, going to a small mountain that’ll only take you about half an hour to completely scale. It’s about taking small steps and slowly immersing yourself into those activities, rather than being shoved into the deep end of the pool at once.
