On 2006-05-11, Tamyka Bell (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
Given that obesity levels in Australia are pretty appalling, and getting
worse, does anyone else think that, instead of the govt spending money
so much money on elite athletes, we should probably focus on encouraging
EVERYONE to play sport?

God no, that's what high school was for. I hated compulsory PE
classes. I was plenty fit already, and PE classes were a complete
waste of time, performing at sports that I neither cared for, nor was
any good at. I merely had to be there to make up the bloody numbers.

At that stage, I wouldn't have known that I was going to like cycling
-- in fact, I probably wouldn't have then, unless they actually taught
me the things I came to learn later (and there wasn't that much
teaching go along, believe me -- can you catch a ball? No, then you
suck). In the last two years of high school, I ended up just sitting
on the side of the court being anti-social, listening to heavy metal.
Heh. Nothing's changed

Not that Coonabarabran high school would have offered cycling as a
choice. For one, it's not idiotball. And if they did, they would
have found a way to ruin it for the rest of my life.

Sport is not for everyone. Not everyone is super competitive, and
sometimes we think testosteroned idiots on the football team are just
idiots. I like cycling partly because I don't think it is a sport
(OK, so I have raced in 5 or so crits to date).


Of course, maybe it's my bias having been to so many tiny schools.
Could you imagine making some kind of sport compulsory in a school of
68 children and 4 teachers? Don't like the choice of 1) dodgeball, 2)
badminton? Too bad, that's all we have teachers for.

In summer, I was the queen of the pool, but I had no interest in
swimming squad, so I never did it, I just swam for fun. Mum was
wonderful and never made me go to a swimming squad either. So I did

Goddamn, I hated the yearly swimming competitions. We all *had* to
take part, whether we could swim the width of the pool or not. I can
still remeber the laughter when I had to compete against one other
person.

The only time I ever wagged school was a yearly athletics day. A full
bloody day! A day much better spent smoking dope next to the creek.

go, but the other kids would laugh at me. I would be the last kid picked
for sport.

Heh. Remember how the two team leaders would go back and forth with
their selection. And the first 10 people selected were always
selected with such enthusiasm? And the last 10 were "aww, do we have
to have him?" (or her, in perhaps your situation

I'd avoid any competition, anything where I had to line up against
others. I especially hated team sports because I felt like such a waste
of space, like I was letting the team down. I would practise catching at
home, bouncing the ball off the wall, but no one thought to practise

You were much more keen than me

with me at school. The PE teachers didn't want anything to do with unco
kids. Sport was for those who were good at it - the rest of us should
just go back to the classroom.

Except that we weren't allowed, even when we wanted to.

Eventually I noticed I was a bit fat

Pffft.

So I guess I feel like there is a serious lack of funding into promoting
sport participation for everyone, and that's bad enough. But it seems
even worse that there is a continual push for elite funding, spreading
the message that sport is only for people who are really good at it.

Hmmm, I'm wondering whether I agree with you now.

Sport would suck for me no matter what, if I had to have done it with
the rest of the yobs from school. I don't think any amount of funding
to us mere mortals would change the fact that the rest of the yobs
would all still be involved.

--
TimC
If I sit here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think
I'm an engineer working on something.
-- S.R. McElroy