To round out this week’s un-official, or at least un-premeditated, Tangential theme Bad At Sports (or “sport” for our readers in the U.K. I know we have SOoooo many), I was thinking of making my offering the story of the single and certain moment when I knew I was destined not for a life on the field but rather for a life in the theatre. It turns out I was not really destined for either and a couple years after the incident I am referring to occurred, I miraculously became a three season athlete who showed up for practice before school even started and attended carbo-loading (no one said just “carb” back then) spaghetti dinners with my teammates. I really did want to try hard and I would make up little inspirational training montages in my mind, complete with rhythmic mantras that encouraged me to just keep putting one ski or one foot in front of the other (Obe-Wan-Kanobe was a real winner). But in the end it just came down to the fact that I never had any natural prowess and by my junior year I realized that unless we are talking about Scrabble, Euchre, or pub trivia, I am truly not a competitive person.
Here are some sports related vignettes from my life to illustrate that point.
Track, 2000: I was a relay runner but was never powerful enough to be the anchor or fast enough to be the starter, so I usually did like the second leg of the 4 x 8. Once I finished my two laps, I would run around the inside of the track so as to intensely and creatively cheer on my teammates. The thing is if you do this for a full lap around the entire inside of the track, technically it’s referred to as pacing. My team got disqualified.
Fencing, 1990: There was no one particular failure in my very short-lived fencing career, so much as the entire endeavor was a bit of a blunder. Oh! Yes you read that right: F-E-N-C-I-N-G. Like the type of pastime that Frasier and Niles Crane might have. You know, like squash? Well, my Renaissance man of a father co-owned (?) and was some sort of VP (?) of a fencing club called Excalibur when I was about seven or eight. I was purely in it for the parental approval and possibility of earning a black and silver windbreaker with the club name embroidered on the back. But there were some older kids (including my brother who went to Junior Olympics in fencing) who were actually good. I looked up to them a lot, but aside from the fact that competitive fencing bouts usually take place in malls, nothing else about the sport really appealed to me. Call me an old coot, but getting repeatedly stabbed by an opponent whose eyes were hidden behind metal mesh lost its charms pretty fast. That windbreaker stayed out of reach for most of my life, but luckily just a few years later I bought a seriously expensive Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat cast jacket to (emotionally) replace it. That brilliant investment is still hanging in my parents’ attic.
Cross-country running, 1998: My main problem in cross country was that I could not seem to keep my mouth shut for an entire race. You’re forced to run next to the same people for SUCH A LONG TIME that naturally I would become inquisitive. What were their lives like? Did their friends come to see them at the meet? Was there a good place to stop in Rochester and get a calzone? As you can imagine, this not only ruined my pacing and expended unnecessary energy, it also ultimately caused me to become sympathetic to my opponents. One time a girl from a rival team threatened to drop out of the race with a stomach cramp and I actually coached her through it just long enough to witness her sudden burst of energy. She beat me by a full minute in the race. This was not the only time this happened.
Soccer, 1992: Club soccer was so popular in the early 90s it would have basically been impossible for me to avoid playing. Soccer won me over with its shiny European appeal and Umbro shorts and so I was thrilled when I somehow sneaked my way on to the same Blackhawks team as my very athletically gifted friend Ester. I was very content to watch her star rise and cheer her on from the sidelines, occasionally getting subbed in to play sweeper (which is a hard position to play when you are on a serious team, but not so much when your opponents are barely coordinated enough to complete a running pass). In a season-ending game against Cottage Grove, I guess I forgot the position I was in, or more like the sport I was playing, and when one of the bigger kids came barreling down the field toward our goal, something in me snapped. I slowly bent over, let the ball roll right into my hands, and picked it up triumphantly.
In a soccer game.
Where I was not the goalie.
Cross-country skiing, 1999: Skiing was the sport that I probably cared about least and was overall worst at competitively. Ironically, it’s also the only sport I still occasionally participate in for fun and leisure. Most of our practices consisted of me and one other girl letting the fast pack get far enough ahead of us that they would not realize we were gone. Then we would ski back and forth on the same smooth, even area until we got bored/thirsty. Then we would eat snow.
During a 5K race through the woods in Elk River, this same girl and I somehow managed to get completely lost and ended up on the biathlon trail which is about four times as long. As it got darker and darker, I wondered if the bus back to St. Paul would leave without us and if I had enough Chapstick on my person to sustain us for the night if need be. I didn’t realize then that calling my parents for a ride back would have been far less embarrassing than getting on to a school bus full of peeved little high school skiers who had been waiting for me for over an hour.
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