I am listening to the BBC and have just heard about a programme they are presenting next Wednesday on what it takes to be a sports super star. One of the teases is that the individual has to become subsumed in the quest for a brilliant and winning performance. It certainly sounds a programme worth listening to and it made me consider why I was never a sports superstar (lack of ability is obviously the main reason - no surprise there!).
One of my clearest junior school memories is of being forced to play netball. I loathed the game. The teacher would be enthusiastic (I suspect that she was relieved to be out of the classroom) and would be what she thought was encouraging. I have extremely clear recollections of watching my fellow pupils dashing around the court enthusiasm oozing from ever pore while I pondered why I needed to pursue a ball and then throw it through a net. When I was unfortunate enough to get the ball in my incompetent paws I would forget the rules and take a step or throw it to anyone - even a member of the opposing team - in order to be rid of it. Eventually the teachers agreed that having me collect the ball that went off court was a solution to my brilliant incompetency.
Then there was the inglorious sports day. Oh my gods! It was hell. Highlands Junior School was obsessed with the damn thing. Weeks before the ghastly event we would be forced to 'try' out for the different events. By Standard Two I had worked out a solution to my issues with this forced activity. Walk. When asked to stand behind a line for the 100 yard dash I would cooperate. When my classmates went into starting positions I'd assume the pose. When the whistle blew ... off they would run while I trotted, at best, or assumed a reasonably fast walk. Teachers would holler. Headmaster Wilson would glare. I would walk.
I could run. I liked running - when I chose to. There was just something extremely odd about, in my mind, about making us all race against each other when some of us were clearly pretty useless in the speed department and some of us just did not want to race. Of course things rapidly became unpleasant. I was given stern lectures by concerned teachers who wanted me to explain my behaviour. I tried to explain that I thought my time would be better spent doing something else. They would huddle together like sheep before a storm and then turn and ask me again why I was refusing to make an effort. After all, I was told, it is for your House. Really, I think I thought, my dear House ... who gave a rat's ass for Drake or Nelson or what ever house I was in. Houses were ridiculous and a means to force competition onto children. My parents were summoned. Of course that meant my father. My mother never took much interest in these escapades. Perhaps she had a hidden degree of sympathy towards my attitude. My father would listen, nod, turn to me and ask me to explain myself. I would do so and receive the identical response I had from the teachers - there must be some other reason why I was resisting being a team member.
By the time I was in Form One I had accepted that I was not a team player in most things. I had enjoyed field hockey enough to actually be a team player but the rest of the sports were not for me. Even my swimming days became hellish when my coach informed my father that he thought I had the ability to become a national swimmer. Eventually by mother stepped in and killed that idea! Over the years in high school I became further removed from team membership. Gym classes where my nightmare - but I'll use that another time - and a few weeks ago I discovered why from a physical aspect but in terms of group membership .. well I had the notion that being a member of a group had generally proved to be a bad idea throughout history and who was I to fly in the face of the evidence. Teachers pouted, Headmistress Thwaites summoned me on a weekly basis to her office where we would watch each other before the game began. My classmates opted for the last choice for a team approach, which suited me as it acknowledged my lack of interest and the level of their expectations. I was not disliked for my lack of sporting achievements, or desire to have any accolades hung around my neck. My peers, I think, just accepted that Karen was not a team player and left me alone. I was not obnoxious about it. I did not berate those who did participate to the best of their abilities. Applauding their achievements was not an issue. The issue was forcing me to be competitive in an area where I had little to no interest.
I had not really heard about passive resistance but it seemed a sensible approach. So by Form Six the sporting authorities in the school had me listed as useless and I was left alone. My victory had taken me nine years but it tasted no less sweet. When I went to University I discovered that the attitudes of many of the students was exactly that of the teachers at school. In my first week we were told to present ourselves on Great Field for Drummies try outs. I declined. Oh my god! What a furor it caused. My new friends informed me that I would be punished. Really, I replied, the rules say nothing about us being forced to march around in short skirts for a group of ridiculous males to gawk at whilst being dismissive of our physical appearance. What, I asked, could they do to us? Silence.
The day arrived for the parade and off everyone trotted except me. I heard them leaving, rolled over and went back to sleep. Needless to say they returned upset and saddened by rude comments from males who considered themselves judges of the female form. A handful of girls throughout the residences had not responded to the call to legs. For the rest it was a day they long remembered after being told their legs were to short, to thin, to fat, less than perfect for the Drummie Squad. I pointed out that Squad was not a word with which I would ever chose to be associated but it fell among the weeping and was not taken to heart.
Don't misunderstand my position. I am competitive. A teacher once accused me of being one of the strange breed of people who "are dedicated to education" as she put it. I regarded it as a compliment which annoyed her to the point where her face changed colour. The difference between me and the teachers who tried to force me to be a 'good sport' is that my greatest competitor is myself. Remember those charts some kids would make at school to show how well they were doing compared with everyone else? They bothered friends of mine. To me they proved that the kids who made them had issues that needed to be resolved. Who really cared what John or Mary did as long as you knew what you were doing and lived up, or down, to your own expectations. If I chose to get a mere pass in a subject well then that was my decision. If I did well - my decision. Having little control over one's life when you are a child makes life rather hellish. I think that perhaps I discovered fairly early on that there were a few areas where I could not actually be forced to do something an adult decreed I should do. Regardless of my father's bellowing and nagging I settled into a comfortable degree of sporting mediocrity that was mine alone.
I don't think I would have made a national swimming team - even in the tiny country of Rhodesia. I am certain that I would never have achieved more than perhaps second-to-last in a hundred yard dash. It is certain that any relay team of which I had been a member would have wept as I stumbled with the baton. I did discover, out of a moment of bloody mindedness, that I could hurdle but my stellar career was cut short by knee injuries (there are gods and they have a fine sense of humour)! I played hockey, swam, and had fun. I never did learn to leap over the horse, or bounce off the box and onto the mat, I never managed to master the trampoline nor the bars but I had good chats with my school friends as I kept moving two people away from the front of the line. I should thank all those kind girls who shrugged and considered me a little different but harmless. They kept me from realising that I had no ability and suffering from overwhelming depression as a result. I was regularly cast out into the wilderness of not being a House member because of all the black points I had collected from not attending compulsory sporting try outs. (On that note I would like to raise the question of how it was supposed to be a punishment since once you were kicked out your house you were refused permission to try out? Did they not see the joy on my face when I was informed that I could no longer participate?).
I agree that children need to play outside. I think having sporting skills is an asset and would never deny that physical fitness is a plus throughout life if one is going to be healthy. What I do not like, in fact I almost mistrust it, is the compulsory aspect that is forced into sports. Get kids to play sports by encouraging them to have fun. I understand that competition is not a bad thing if it is balanced. But sadly as with so many things that are done in the name of education that aspect soon vanishes when adult egos become involved. There is a element of militarisation in sports that has always distressed me. I do not think it has changed since I was at school. The bullying in schools is, I think, a result, to some degree, of that mentality. Fitting in becomes the mantra which if not chanted grants permission to others to ostracise a child.
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