Were you a good athlete as a kid?

[wicked]

Did you play in high school or college? Did you get into sports journalism (if you went that route) because you were a good athlete or in spite of being the worst at everything?

I was horrible. I ran some indoor track in high school. My senior year, they threw me on the mile because they needed a sacrificial lamb. Pretty sure I finished last in every race. The only way I was going to maintain any connection with sports was writing about them.

I played some beer league kickball in my 30s, but I don’t even want to think about running around bases now.

 

[DanielSimpsonDay]

 

[Songbird]

Played soccer for 10 years with a handful of goals in youth leagues and 1 magical goal during 2 years on JV.

I've played pickup basketball my whole life and can hang on the court. One of my best athletic moments was during a 2 on 2 game in Brattleboro.

I've played a lot of softball and once tried out for the Cincinnati Reds as a pitcher when they came up to Windsor Vermont. Faced 6 batters, none scored.

I'm 50 and can still move pretty well in sports once warmed up.

 

[User 150927]

Little League All-Star the second year my town let (were forced to let) girls play.
Two-time all-league in high school, fast pitch softball
Walked on and made my division one college softball team before deciding that's not what I wanted to do with my life.
Good receiver in backyard football, decent defensive back. Once the boys got too big and I was no longer a physical match, I played all time quarterback for both sides whenever we had a pick up game.
Was always the first girl picked for whatever sport we were playing in gym. Was a decent little high jumper for a while, but was not tall enough to make anything of it.
I went into journalism after dropping my original major, because I liked sports and I liked to write. As chance had it, I was at one of the best journalism schools in the country. I chose sports writing from the beginning.

 

[Octave]

I had a pretty good arm and not much else.

 

[Batman]

I was always a runt. I remember having a physical my freshman year of high school and being 4-foot-11 and 90 pounds, so any dreams I had of translating my modest backyard sports ability into actual sports ability died early.
It didn't help that I was the worst athlete in our neighborhood group that included a 6-foot-2 seventh-grader who eventually played Division I college baseball, another kid who probably ran a 4.6 40 in high school, and second kid's brother who was also a very good athlete. Even if I was a better athlete than a lot of other kids I never would have known it.

That physical I mentioned was for the high school swim team. I didn't comprehend what I was getting into and could barely swim two laps. My first time swimming 100 meters, my time was 1 minute and 59 seconds. But thankfully I had a coach who didn't laugh me out of the building, let me develop at my own pace, and by the end of my sophomore year I was fairly competent. Never transcended to "great," but my best 100 time in my senior year was 1:05 and I could compete in every stroke.
In my senior year I even set a school relay record that lasted less than 24 hours. It was in the preliminaries of the season-ending county meet on Friday night. The coach replaced me for the finals on Saturday with an insanely fast sophomore and they destroyed the time we swam the night before. That record would have fallen the next year anyway — we had two sets of underclassman brothers who were the four fastest swimmers on the team, including the aforementioned sophomore and another who was on the record-setting relay — but it still pisses me off thinking about it. I never even got to see my name go up on the record board at our pool. Considering where I started from, it would have been a great way to finish my high school career.

 

[Starman]

No. I was awful, a fat kid in grade school. I was worse than pathetic in neighborhood baseball games; I was given special dispensation to keep batting because of "foul tips" when everybody else was called out after one foul strike, otherwise I'd shuffle off sobbing.
In 6th/7th grade, I said, "**** this noise" and decided to start getting better in sports. Being big and strong, I was ok in football, and doing a lot of reading and stuff, understanding I'd never be a speedy shooting guard, I got to be an ok rebounding power forward in basketball and a fairly good place hitting first baseman/OF in gym class/ rec league softball. Not good enough to make the HS varsity in any of those sports; my school was a pretty big power in a lot of sports so you had to be damn good to make the team. But I was a stud in gym classes and rec leagues.
In high school, I took up skiing, tennis and floor hockey, and got reasonably ok in those sports.
For 3-4 seasons, our subdivision had one mid-30ish guy who, rumor had it, had either played college volleyball or been invited to the Olympic trials in 64 or 68 (nobody could really get the details straight); he mowed and cleared off a vacant lot and set up a regulation size grass volleyball court, so that became a thing for a couple summers, and I got fairly good.
In high school, since I wasn't playing varsity football, baseball or basketball, I
hung around the neighborhood with other non varsity athletes and terrorized the driveway basketball, and vacant-lot touch football and softball games. From being a literal pity case a few years earlier, now I was Babe Ruth blasting home runs off neighbors' aluminum siding.

I did occasionally blunder into some fairly high level pickup hoops games in high school and college. I was usually the last guy picked, but I became useful because I wouldn't try to do **** I couldn't do, and I'd stick to doing stuff I was actually credible at (boxing out, passing, setting picks).

In the course of those games, I actually did play a few times with and against ... Earvin Johnson.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I was small and slow. Played youth soccer from ages 7-12. Did pretty well as a midfielder in the 7-9 league and we won two titles; then had a tougher time in the 10-12 league. We went 1-10-1 in my second year and actually went winless in 12 games my third year. The fact that I was one of the better players on the team in those two years said it all.

Never tried out for soccer in junior high and above because it was pretty apparent that I was a step or two below the others.

Played Little League ball when I was 8. Did poorly, especially after getting hit by a couple of pitches. My parents asked our coach to work with me and the coach said he didn’t have time because he was devoting his time towards the couple of kids who would be on tbe All-Star team. That, plus my parents didn’t want to take me to both baseball and soccer, made my decision easy. Later, after soccer ended, I played Babe Ruth ball when I was 13. Totally overmatched.

Parents wouldn’t let me play football. Ran cross country in junior high and high school; finished last a lot more than finishing first. Enjoyed it though. Ran track in 8th grade; did poorly and hurt my knee after the first meet, so that ended that. Didn’t feel like going out for the team afterward.

In eighth grade gym, I wrestled (amateur) three kids, two of whom were on the junior high team. I lost them all, mostly because I had to take my glasses off so I couldn’t see the moves when they were demonstrated. but I never was pinned. Afterward, the coach told me and a couple other guys that we should go out for the team. I watched one practice, where the coaches were screaming at the kids, and decided that wasn’t for me.

 

[Roscablo]

I played baseball and football competitively into high school. I have zero true athletic ability and pretty much have physical stats like how Rudy was described in that one scene.

I tried really hard though and always put myself out there. I got on some pretty high level competitve baseball teams end of middle school and early high school, including playing on an all-star team in a national regional tournament once. I was a much better baseball player than football but loved football to no end.

Funny thing is I got cut from high school baseball sophomore year, but played football throughout.

I started a handful of games on varsity but was on the field for every special teams play, so I was still out there a lot. Loved every second of it.

I in the end went into sports writing to an extent to stay close to the games once I saw the writing on the wall.

 

[Cosmo]

Played soccer until eighth grade, fullback. Transitioned to tennis in high school. We had like 45 players on the team but only six got into matches, and my greatest accomplishment was climbing to No. 6 on the challenge ladder and actually getting on the bus for a match at Mount Vernon High School in Alexandria, where I was resoundingly thumped 6-0. Our No. 1 and 2 were both really freaking good. I enjoyed the exercise and the competition. The challenge ladder was pretty intense. We had some really fun matches.

That was the end of it for me, unless you consider darts a sport. I'm pretty damn good at that.

Got into sports writing sophomore year at Virginia Tech, having tried radio my freshman year. My first assignment was a Tech-West Virginia Thursday night football sidebar, as the seniors basically decided they wanted to drink instead of covering the game. Was hooked on it the first time I went into the locker room. Story was on running back Ken Oxendine, and he couldn't have been cooler to a nervous guy on his first assignment.

 

[MTM]

It took me a long time to admit it, but no. I played seven years of rec league/Little League/Babe Ruth baseball and one year of Pop Warner basketball.
I tried hard and loved to play but didn't have much skill. Like Batman, I was always a runt. I didn't hit 5 feet until I was 13 and 100 pounds until I was 16.
I was fast and still regret not running track in high school. I was cut from the baseball team after a decent tryout and didn't listen to my friends asking me to join them on the track team. I was a faster sprinter than them, and they lettered.
When I was about 10, I knew I would never play for the Dodgers, so I decided I would be their announcer. (Vin Scully held that job into my 50s). I got a degree in broadcasting but ended up in print.

 

[dixiehack]

Hard no. Even if I hadn’t been the youngest in my class (graduated at 17), I was rail thin, uncoordinated and only average height (Thanks Mom!) Gym teachers rolled their eyes when they realized I was in their class.

 

[Starman]

I got into sports journalism because both my parents had been in journalism (although not sports). My dad had quite a few sport-oriented books around the house, and I started reading them and picking up their style.

 

[Songbird]

To answer the second part ... I took after my dad and read the sports section from a young age. Loved the agate page.

Probably went into sportswriting, as a good friend suggested, as a way to communicate with my dad who never communicated with me growing up.

 

[FileNotFound]

I was cut from a rec-league baseball team when I was 8. I was small, slow and afraid of the ball, but other than that I loved the game.

I worked myself into being a decent basketball player, but at 5-foot-4 and 85 pounds as a high school freshman, my future in the sport was dim. I was cut in favor of the other skinny kid, who was 5-6.

So I turned my attention to cross country, where I was all-conference as a junior. I ran track, also, but my only claim to fame there was once having been lapped by a future Olympian twice in the same 3,200-meter race.

My failures in basketball led to my becoming the team’s stat guy, which put me at the scorer’s table next to the sports writer from the local paper, which led to me being hired to do phoners, which led to … here, I guess. And I’ve managed to keep myself in shape with running, biking and walking enough to get to my mid-50s and still be capable of traveling long distances and hiking up the occasional mountain and seeing cool stuff. It’s nice to be able to go back and tell that crying 8-year-old who wasn’t wanted on the baseball team that everything turned out OK.

 

[HanSenSE]

Medium at best. Was born with flat feet so, eventually, anything involving running was out. Little League career ended in sixth grade after mom remarried and we moved. Not that there would have been that much demand for someone who got into the last couple of innings of the game and usually struck out. But became a good swimmer in high school and was usually our third person in the distance freestyles. Had always read the papers, though, so pursuing that as a career seemed interesting.

 

[Tighthead]

I had really good hands, but was average on the more running jumping stuff. So I was always decent and could do a few things well, but never great. I paid attention more than most kids and watched sports a ton so my wits helped me out.

In my twenties I played rugby, rising to play at a pretty high level, but I was just a guy at that level. Not even an elite drinker.

Got my golf index down to under 5 at various times which is decent.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Medium. Played JV baseball, didn't play varsity because I got a job, started playing again after HS and played county ball (U-19) and town team ball (open) until I was 21. My last county ball game I was 4-x4 with a homer and caught the final out in CF. So that ended well.

Played four years of HS soccer, peaked in 10th grade with four goals on JV. Tore cartilage in my knee the summer before my senior year, it locked on me all season and I did not play much. We were division champs and sectional runnerups.

In college I played every intramural possible, often on the fraternity B or C team. Our B hardyball (razzle-dazzle FB) team I QBed finished fourth, our A team won the league. I also scored 18 points in my final intramural hoops game for the C team.

Took up running in my early 20s and got down to a 35:34 10K before my body started falling apart, eventually resulting in me becoming the titanium man I am today. Now I walk and swim.

My younger brother was a D1 soccer player before wrecking his knee and having to retire.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I loved basketball as a kid but my shrimpy body wouldn’t cooperate. That’s when I found wrestling. I did that through high school (All-City as a senior) and my first year of college. Then I became a decent distance runner in my 40s. I’m good enough to break two hours in a half marathon, and came within a ridiculously long bathroom line of breaking 4:30 in a full.

My son has shown some real natural talent in basketball, track and field, and rock climbing. I just coached his basketball team to the league championship last month. I’ve found a niche with coaching — first with basketball and now with his track team and my daughter’s soccer team.

As for the journalism question, I only became a sports writer to get my foot in the door so I could move to news, where I spent most of my career.

 

[ChrisLong]

I'm the classic guy who wasn't good enough to play, but found a way to stay in sports via the newspaper game. Loved sports.

By my 12-year-old season of little league, I was the best fielder in the league. Even our coach let me play shortstop sometimes instead of his son (best player in the league) when the son wasn't pitching. But I, too, had a frumpy body and was born a flat-foot (negative arch, actually). I slowly regressed, not being able to run or jump. Pony League I was in the minors both years and Colt League, I was the worst player on the team. Nevertheless, I tried out for baseball in high school my junior year (new coach came in). I had a good tryout. In a scrimmage, I hit one off the left-field fence (just missed a homer). The coach kept me on JV. I guess that it was because the JV coach was also the Varsity basketball coach and my History teacher. He had to look at me in class every day. My senior year, the coach kept me on Varsity, too. I don't know why. He told me I was on the team, but I would never play. Was that OK with me? I said yes, mostly for the camaraderie and being part of a team. Truth is, the field got too big for me, I wasn't strong enough. But I played softball into my 50s and always did very well.

In basketball, I had a great pull-up jumper (a la Jerry West) in junior high. We shot free throws to make teams for pick-up games so I always got to play. I had good skills, but at 5-8, I was never going to be a basketball player. Didn't even try in high school.

Surprisingly, I was in the top group in junior high volleyball despite lack of jumping ability. I could really serve, could set pretty well and could hit my spots on spikes. I had good skills, except as a blocker. Me and my partner lost in the finals on the all-school tournament. I didn't play in high school because it was concurrent with baseball season. Played a lot on the beach with friends into my 40s. My hometown was a hotbed for volleyball.

Darts? I could play with anybody. Large population of Brits in my city and we played all the time. In the summer, all the big-shots from Europe came over for the tournaments and hung out at our bars. I rarely beat them, but I never got embarrassed.

It worked out pretty well. I had a 44-year career in newspapers, all in sports.