Athletics is not for me

I’m not an athletic person. I tried to be every once in a while, but it took way too much energy. As a matter of fact, it sometimes makes me tired just watching athletic people.
I didn’t play sports in college except an attempt at co-ed softball and an occasional flag football game with a group of friends. I exerted much more energy on trying to find ways to win without exerting energy than I did actually playing. You didn’t have to athletically inclined for that. The one and only touchdown I ever made was a fluke. Everyone knew I had knee surgery about six months before and as I neared the endzone and the other team was closing in on me, I just hollered, “oh my knee! Oh my knee!” They stopped running and I scored my one and only touchdown.
I didn’t play sports in high school either. I was a junior varsity cheerleader for one year. One summer of Jane Fonda Workouts every single day was more than enough for me.
I didn’t play girls softball and things, like Upward sports, didn’t exist when I was growing up. I don’t remember many girls’ sports when I was growing up, and maybe that’s why I never developed a love for athletics.
Now, there are tons of girls’ sports. From about age five until geriatrics, girls or women have the opportunity to play. I think it is great and I think it goes a long way in teaching young women to be strong, confident and independent.
A news story caught my attention last week. It was about Jamie Nared, a 12-year-old girl, who is a phenomenal basketball player. So good, in fact, that she played with the boys’ team in a Beaverton, Oregon private league just so she would have more competition. The boys on her team had no problems with having a girl on the team. Why would they? She helped the win a lot of games.
It was at one of those games that she helped them win that had caused a ruckus and had the parents of the other team in an uproar. Nared has scored 30 points in several games and helps lead her team to victory pretty consistently. In this case, the parents of the other team said she was only able to score so many points and her team only won because the boys on the opposing team just couldn’t play as hard and aggressive against a girl as they would a team full of boys.
I would be really proud of my daughter if she was so good at something that she had to cross gender lines just to find decent competition, but I can’t say I’d want my daughter playing against a bunch of sweaty boys. Maybe if it were on a 5- or 6- year-old team, but once the kids started reaching puberty and their hormones started raging it would have to end.
Nared, who seemed really unconcerned about the whole situation when she was interviewed on the news, already has a college scholarship before even reaching her teens. She’s not playing on the boys team anymore and she is ok with that.
Jamie’s been playing with the boys since the second grade and I’m sure that she thinks the whole thing stinks. She’s taken the ordeal in stride and is still playing the game she loves.
Her parents really have something to be proud of.