Columnist: Get rid of team sports in gym class

I can see merit in this. The time constraints of a gym class -- you get maybe 25-30 minutes of actual activity once you take out time for dressing, attendance, warm-ups and travel time if you go outside -- probably lends itself better to a good cardio workout more than playing some random game. You can just get more accomplished.
That's far different than saying (as the author did) that we should scrap team sports so little Kelli (with an "i") doesn't get her feelings hurt.

The biggest problem with it, though, is that a lot of kids actually like playing these evil team sports, and it's important to keep them engaged. I was a terrible basketball player in high school, and at my best would've been considered an average athlete. I still would rather have played two quick games of basketball or volleyball than stand there and do calisthenics for 25 minutes.
My gym teachers in high school usually let us play whatever we wanted. One year we played volleyball probably four days out of five. It was a mix of all kinds of kids, some athletic and some not, and we had tons of fun because it was a laid-back group activity. Even a kid like me, who was introverted and didn't have a lot of friends, was able to find a role in the game and feel like he belonged for a while.
If anything, team sports provided a way of equalizing everybody. For that 30 minutes, the class warfare stopped and everybody was cool with each other.
The ones who didn't participate weren't ostracized because they were poor athletes, they were ostracized because they came across as stuck-up, whiny little bitches who thought they were too good to hang out with the rest of us. More often than not it was the popular girls who didn't want to sweat. While everybody else was cutting up and having fun, they sat on the bleachers. Little did we know they were taking notes for a whiny column they'd end up writing 20 years later.

 

I'm not sure that anyone is advocating for no gym class. Just a restructured gym class.

 

Nobody is learning a team sport in gym class, not well enough to play it anyway. Another effect of early specialization and travel teams. By middle school the gap between those who play regularly and those who don't is just enormous and likely will never close.

Columnist isn't saying end gym class. Columnist is saying change it to focus on on individual well-being.

 

Yeah, while there are many "rules" that exist in kid's sports today that cause me to roll my eyes, getting rid of kids picking teams is definitely not one of them.

 

Squat thrusts for an hour

 

I've always thought they should split gym classes up into skill level groups. That way, a small, unathletic girl like me would not have been playing dodgeball against big guys who were true athletes. I still remember getting nailed by a ball in dodgeball by the best athlete in our school when I was in 3rd grade. It was humiliating and it hurt (physically). Gym class was never fun for me. I spent a lot of time standing around, praying the ball wouldn't come near me. To this day, even though I am not a klutz, those gym experiences scarred me enough that I hate participating in any kind of sports.

My high school had a weight room that we used maybe once or twice a year in gym class and no one showed us how to use the equipment. We never ran, except when we had those Presidential physical fitness tests and then it was "go out there and run a mile" and the kids who were slower (or couldn't finish, like me) got made fun of. I wish gym class had been more about exercise, but then again, I started elementary in the stone-age early 70s.

 

Yes, but it's a restructuring based solely on the belief that anything that hurts somebody's feelings must be eliminated.

Under that idiotic premise, if I get my feelings hurt because I suck at math, we need to eliminate math class or let me skip it so I'll feel better about myself.

Fuck that and fuck the whiny little bitch who penned this shit.

 

Can you cite to this stance?

 

I went to high school in a college town host to a BCS-conference FB and BB program. A fairly significant number of the students were kids of faculty or staff at the university.

The high school had a great winning tradition in most sports. Nobody was ever excused from gym class unless they were injured (i.e., on crutches).

It did seem on game days we usually did something half-speed for most of the class but nobody seemed to mind too much.

Now after sophomore year, gym class was not mandatory but was an elective instead, so I suppose now that I think back on it varsity-starter level athletes may not have signed up for basketball during winter term, but if they did sign up, they were expected to play.

 

Society at large my ass. It's not about eliminating bad feelings. It's about understanding that not every damn thing is a competition.
There's a difference between learning about success & failure and being humiliated. (sp)

 

I would argue that individual sports open kids up to more ridicule than team sports ever does.

I would think it would be more embarrassing to be the kid who can do the fewest pushups than being the worst player on the baseball team.

I'm sure we're only a few years away from gym being completely eliminated or it becoming everybody running around chasing bubbles before everybody gets ice cream.

 

And niggers and kikes, too. And wetbacks. And faggots.