Sports

I have spent a lot of my life trying to find a sport that 'fits'. It was always important when I was young to play a sport. We did sport every day in primary school, and we were always encouraged to join the local sports teams.

An incomplete list of all the sports I tried: 
Basketball
Netball
Soccer
Track and field
Swimming
AFL
Rugby
Water polo
Jousting (no, I'm not kidding)
Triathalons

I'm going to talk about my experiences in all of those. Some of them will only be one sentence, while others I actually have real stories for.


Basketball: I loved playing basketball. I played with one team for 4 years. Then we had a change of coach, and I was kicked out because of my 'attitude problems'. The new coach's daughter started when her mother started coaching, and wanted to be number 7. I had always been number 7, even before I started playing with that team. It was, and still is, my lucky number. I wanted to keep my number, and the rest of the team did too. We weren't superstitious, but, you know, when something seems lucky, you don't change it. But, the coach gave her daughter number 7. That didn't worry me much. It's just something that happens. Then we found out that the daughter wasn't actually very good, but our coach would sub off some of our best players so that her daughter could play. So, one day, I snapped. We had just lost a game because she kept our best player on the bench the entire game, and I started shouting at her. Then I got kicked out, and I was so angry I didn't even try to look for another team.


Netball: In high school, I played netball. I wasn't very good at shooting or that sort of thing, but I was an awesome defender. I was always trying to convince the coach to let me play Goal Keeper, but we were assigned positions on a rotational basis, and so I had to play the positions I hated, and somebody who would rather be right in the game had to play GK. So, in the end, I just quit.
Soccer: I played soccer in high school for a year. I was actually pretty good, but I didn't get picked for the team the next year. That's all.


Track and field: No big story behind this one, I just sort of drifted away from track into triathalons.

Swimming: I swam for years and years, but then I got to old to swim with the club I was with, and just started doing triathalons instead.
 
AFL: I played this with a company called Auskick, until I was told that girls aren't allowed to play as adults. That sort of thing can be pretty disheartening.
 
Rugby: See the above AFL story.
 
Water Polo: I played pretty well for several years, but I injured my knees and couldn't play properly.
 
Jousting: When I was 18, I joined a local medieval group and I jousted for them. I had some experience horse riding, and under the armour (yes, I even had armour) you couldn't tell I was a woman. Sadly, many of the people in the group moved out of town and we simply didn't have the man power to put on the shows any more.

Triathalons: This is my current sport. It combines two of my great loves; running and swimming (and I'm not a bad cyclist, either), so it seemed the logical combination of the 2.