Of course, different body types are more favorable to certain sports. A small man would have difficulty in basketball as a large man would have difficulty in jockeying. It is also just as true that certain sports fit better with particular personality types.
In some capacity during my youth I was involved in two contact sports: football and wrestling. Neither was ever a good fit: then as now I'm nothing if not confrontational. Athletic ability aside - in which I was certainly lacking - I never had the requisite desire to hurt my opponent. Instead, I only felt empathy - here was another kid just like me, who was probably swept up in winds larger than he was which landed him across from me - maybe playing for his dad's acceptance, his peers acceptance, or like me, both. In that realization, how could I want to hurt him? He did nothing to me. Instead of a blood lust, I was nauseated by guilt. My coaches or teammates, on the other hand, actively encouraged the desire to hurt. Undoubtedly this explains how I often viewed my teammates to be bigger bastards than the kids on the other side. And that view extended outside the team: "Get mean! Get tough! Why don't you go out there and hit somebody?! You'd rather play in the band with all the queers and fags". I heard that at least every week from my father, off-season included.
At least in football, you are just one element of a team and are obscured to anonymity by a masking helmet and large padding. Wrestling had an additionally unpleasant, mano-a-mano element, focusing the center of attention on just two people during a match. Even more than being non-confrontational I was then, as now, extremely introverted. All those eyes that would be on me! I hated the thought. At tournaments I hoped to get called to the small mat, off to the side, where maybe no one else would even notice that I was wrestling.
Looking back, how else might it have been? Was there a sport more geared to my personality? There is a scene in Grease where Danny Zuko successively tries out basketball, where his aggression prompts the coach to push him towards wrestling, where that "he's a hitter" prompts the coach to push him towards baseball, and finally, it is decided that long-distance running, alone and solitary, would fit best. I deeply wished a knowledgeable adult would have taken me aside, working with me to find a sport tailor fitted. I fantasized that both athletic glory and my happiness were only a matter of match.
What could it have been? A non-contact, team sport, in which I'd be indistinguishable from the other players. I'm thinking crew? I'm thinking bobsleigh?
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