Diego Arredondo, left, and Antonio Arredondo pose for a photo Oct. 13, 2021, before playing for the Balloon World Cup in their game Keep-Up Balloon.

For someone who loves sports as much as I do, I wish I was better at them.

In high school I played on varsity sparingly but still made the basketball team. Not a terrible career, but when your younger brother comes after you and sets the record for career points — 1,137 to my 50 — you don’t feel like a great athlete.

So when my siblings and I started hitting a balloon around, maybe it was the built-up competitiveness from all the minutes I never played that kicked in. In minutes, a simple hit had developed into a full-blown game, as we dove over everything to keep the balloon in the air. And if it hits the ground, too bad. That’s a point for the other team.

After a few months, we played some games on TikTok for our enjoyment. Two years later, it has become our favorite pastime.

Over time, we’ve built an army of 430,000 followers on the site, a following that caught the attention of Ellen DeGeneres, who had us on her show in December.

The videos also inspired a Spanish influencer and his friend FC Barcelona player Gerard Pique to create an international competition of Keep-Up Balloon, the Balloon World Cup.

We were invited to Barcelona to play, and while we lost in the first round to Cuba, I can finally call myself an athlete. High school me may have been a bit surprised by the course it took to get there, but hey, I’m not arguing.

— Antonio Arredondo, newsroom intern, East Oregonian