Image source: Merlina McGovern
What is the worst school sport, and why is it dodgeball? Today’s Inktober prompt is, dodge. Not a very scary prompt, I’ll admit, not a whiff of Halloween about it. Dodge is also a bit of an abstract concept, so my mind went to faint, but terrible, memories of childhood dodgeball games. And when in doubt, add some ghosts, and voila, you’ve got yourself a bona fide Halloween sketch.
As I was sketching this little scenario out, I couldn’t help but think back to this traumatic physical ed activity. I can still remember the chemical smell of that pink rubber ball as well as the horrifying thwack (with a little plastic twang echo) it would make as it smacked you in the arm. I was neither strong nor agile, so not only was I always one of the first to be hit out of the game, I was always one of the last to be picked for a dodgeball team. Oh, the embarrassing indignity of standing around in a smelly t-shirt and unflattering shorts, crossing one foot over the other and staring a hole into the ground before me trying to disappear as kid after kid got called up to be on a team.
Finally, my name would be called, and the PE teacher would blow his whistle to let the reign of terror begin. I’m sure there was just a teeny tiny bit of strategy to be had as team bullies, ahem, captains would slam the ball at the slowest opponents or maybe, just maybe try to tag out the best player on the other team. The latter strategy was high risk and high reward, so it was one that was rarely taken.
I’m not sure what I learned in those abject exercises in misery other than to try to deliberately stand in front of a ball to get tagged out early and be put out of my agony early in the game. This game almost made as much sense to me as the scooter races we would do (and by scooter, I mean square planks of wood attached to four wheels that we would sit on and drag ourselves up and down the basketball court with). I mean, was there any PE activity that I didn’t dread? On those days that we had to participate in square dancing, that meant that you had to hold someone else’s sweaty hands and pretend not to smell someone else’s bad BO.
I know that I sound pretty down when it comes to school sports. My foray into team sports ran the gamut from volleyball to softball to soccer. I never really stuck with any of them, mostly because I was not very athletic and because I would much rather be at home reading a book. I certainly would never have survived today’s school sports, which are insanely competitive. Parents will spend thousands and thousands of dollars to keep their kids in club sports while they’re in elementary and middle school only to have them not make the high school teams. It’s madness. I have read so much about how sports are so important to a girl’s confidence and self-esteem, so you would hope that schools would make an effort to accommodate everyone who wants to join a team. My daughter eventually joined the crew team in high school—a sport that isn’t as popular as soccer. In spite of that, my daughter absolutely loves rowing. It’s a team sport with an individual component so she gets the social aspect that she so craves and is also able to focus on being the very best that she can be.
I’m thankful that she didn’t follow my own unathletic path. When we visited our daughter’s high school orientation, the PE teacher assured us that modern high school physical ed focused on teamwork and leadership skills, a far cry from the hunger-games exercises in survival of the past. But as I looked around the teacher to the wooden floored gym behind him, I swear that I could see those dreaded pinkish rubber balls lurking around in the background.
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