Growing up, where you the kid picked last in sports?

[Anonymous]

I was a good but not great athlete.

But there’s no karmic justice where the athletes are fat addicts while the nerds rule the world. The opposite was mostly the case.

[Anonymous]

Yes. I'm petite. My parents were pretty nerdy, so they didn't watch sports and also didn't know how to play them. I remember in about 3rd grade, we played softball that month for PE. I was the only person in the entire grade who couldn't hit a baseball/softball. They brought the tee out for me. But even after I hit it, I didn't really understand the game. The whole thing was pretty embarrassing.

The worst was the Presidential Fitness awards. Nearly every boy got the blue ones, but not one girl got the blue one. You had to be able to do pull ups to get the blue one. I was actually the best runner in the class and also had the class record for sit ups, but I couldn't do a pull up. I'm still so angry at how we were set up to fail. And it's not like they worked on our muscles so that we could gain enough muscle to do a pull up.

I grew up to love the gym, sports like tennis and dancing (DH and I compete). PE is just a mess in my opinion.

My dad talked about getting failed in PE because he couldn't climb the rope in gym class. And my mom talked about having to strip naked and take a shower in front of the PE coaches. Seems like PE has always had issues.

[Anonymous]

I sure was! I was naturally very unathletic. I still am. If you watched me move you would know right away that I am not a natural athlete.

But I have gotten into fitness as an adult. I've run a marathon and I have dabbled in powerlifting and crossfit. I like moving even though doing it well does not come naturally to me. At various times I have gotten myself to be a reasonably fast long-distance runner (not super fast, I'm taking a 2:00 half marathon here, but that seemed incredible for someone who used to hate running the mile in school!) and reasonably strong for my size (235 lb deadlift at 125 lb body weight). I'm pretty proud of how far I have come considering how awful gym class always was for me and how much I hates sports as a kid.

That said, don't get me anywhere near a ball. I am still not going to catch it or hit it if you throw it my way.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I have always been a terrible athlete. I have Pectus excavatum which makes aerobic activity difficult. I am slim and a mesomorph so new friends often guess that I was athletic as a teen which is hilarious as I was a total Daria type.

[Anonymous]

Almost always picked first or close to it and was a very accomplished athlete for years. Unfortunately, I foolishly grew to associate exercise with sports too much and became a fatty as sports died down (can’t dunk in my 40s). I would give up a lot of being picked first moments to have developed better exercise habits just for exercise sake. Am getting into it these days but I wasted a lot of years and have discovered some of the injuries that provided glory moments in high school and college make it more painful now.

[Anonymous]

Oh yes. I was not athletic at all in my younger years. I got a little better as I played more organized sports in HS. I was always picked first for any kind of academic contest or project team though. And the same kids who were great on the playing field were horrible in class and tests. So you know it all evens out people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost always picked first or close to it and was a very accomplished athlete for years. Unfortunately, I foolishly grew to associate exercise with sports too much and became a fatty as sports died down (can’t dunk in my 40s). I would give up a lot of being picked first moments to have developed better exercise habits just for exercise sake. Am getting into it these days but I wasted a lot of years and have discovered some of the injuries that provided glory moments in high school and college make it more painful now.

This is just a long way of saying that I very much admire those who were not so athletic but committed to being fit and healthy adults. Kudos and more.

[Anonymous]

Yup. I think they even stuck me in remedial gym once!

Ended up a pretty competitive rower and a decent runner and swimmer. I’m still very active in my mid-40s and put on muscle easily for a woman, so many people assume I’m an athlete, at least when I wear tank tops.

[Anonymous]

I was almost always picked last, if you can call it being picked. The last person doesn't get their name called as it's obvious you're last. I didn't like it, but I couldn't really blame them. I had zero interest in chasing a soccer ball and soccer was one of the only sports offered. Once I got an interim report for lack of participation. Twice I was "punished", both times for volleyball which I actually liked but I didn't put my arms up unless I needed to at the last second. Boys would jump right in front of me to hit a ball that was coming right at me, and the teacher got mad at me, instead of being mad at the boys for hogging the ball. The teacher even tested my coordination by throwing a ball at me. I'm not uncoordinated. She still made me leave the class and walk around the track as punishment, but then the ball rang so I got to the locker room first which was a good thing.

[Anonymous]

I’m a loser baby

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My elementary teachers had us pick teams publicly in first to last order for everything-almost every day in gym class, but also classroom competition type things--like team geography bee, academic contests etc.

If I recall correctly, I was a middle of the packer for most things. As a kid I absolutely loathed standing out in any way--good or bad --in anything.

That’s grotesque.

It was experiences like this that instilled in me a distrust of teachers. I know they aren’t all bad but I had so many sadistic, selfish, mean teachers growing up that I’ve just never been able to get on board with the whole “teachers are heroes” thing. Some are. Some are NOT. Same with nurses.

Even now, there are still teachers who do stuff like this. My kid has an “old school” teacher this year and while she hasn’t had kids pick teams, she dies a lot of things that were common in schools in the 80s and I don’t say this in so many words to my kid but: I hate her.

I’m the pp you’re responding to and I agree. Every day in my (very well regarded) elementary school there was some “ordering” of kids…it was a small school so everyone knew who stood where in our small class. I truly think my fear of standing out (which continued through college) and wanting to hide in the middle of the pack was due to this kind of teaching especially at a super young age like 6. The “top” and bottom kids in things both had tons of different pressures on them that no 6 year old should be exposed to. Better to just hide in the middle.

[Anonymous]

No.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I was petite and short and a minority kid. There weren't many of us. It was humiliating. I remember the gym teachers in middle school making us pick teams and grading us on things like how many baskets we could make in 5 minutes in front of the entire class. It was awful. I remember my homeroom teacher telling me I really got a D in gym but she knew how stupid the grading was so she changed it to a B. This was 6th grade!

High school was much better as they didn't make us pick teams in gym class and we were graded more on our knowledge of each section and sport and you could study for it.

Today I am really fit and work out and row and do barre and hike a lot.

[Anonymous]

Yeah but I really didn’t care. I remember in 9th grade we had a dodgeball unit (??? Wtf? How much can you do w dodgeball) and my friends and I would let ourselves get hit so we could be out and sit on the sidelines and gossip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a loser baby

So why don't you kill me?