Prompt 268-Sports

Are you a sports fan? Do you watch or participate? Which sports?

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, and as recently as Monday, I was a shy, bookish kid. I liked playing outside and being active but sports weren’t really my thing. In middle school I played soccer because I needed some extra curricular activity and always enjoyed our soccer unit in gym class. Unfortunately, our team wasn’t very good and I only played the one year.

I skied alpine with my sisters to stay active during the winter, since we lived a couple miles from a ski mountain, but I quit for a few years after I slipped on an icy patch and went into a tree. In high school I got into cross country skiing and eventually worked my way back to alpine after that, but I wasn’t really all that competitive.

In college I was obsessed with the sport all college kids are obsessed with: Ultimate Frisbee. At least, that was the Thing™ in 2008-2010, I don’t know if it’s still as big now. That was the one sport I loved to participate in, but even that was just for fun. I didn’t really “get” the kids who were super-into-it competitive, having “practice” and “tryouts” and all that.

I didn’t really follow professional sports of any sort until college when I started actually paying attention to the NFL. I went to a technical school which meant any random sampling of students would have 1 girl for every 6 guys. Of course Tomboy Sara had mostly guy friends, and a handful of those friends were from western NY, which meant Bills Mafia baby! One Buffalo! And many Sundays spent watching football at their dorm.

Football was always my stepdad’s thing. I had a hard time taking an interest in it because I didn’t think I could ever understand something he was so obsessed with. But surrounded by all those enthusiastic college guys cheering for their teams, I wanted to share in their exuberance and so I asked questions. They were excited enough to have a girl sharing their interest, they patiently explained the rules to me and answered my questions as they came.

Nine years later and I’ve been commissioning a fantasy football league for the last five seasons. Fantasy gives me a reason to enjoy the sport as a whole, not just mindlessly root for my own team, hapless as they are. It gets me interested in players and adds a whole other level of excitement to Sundays because I have a vested interest in more than one game.

The other sport I’ve become a fan of is tennis. This one is all my husband’s doing. Teaching me how to play and explaining the tournaments to me. If you had told me ten years ago that I would go to the US Open Men’s Singles Final in 2016 I wouldn’t have had a clue what that meant. Now I have favorite players and I follow tennis journos on Twitter and I stay up too late during Slams watching live matches from the other side of the world.

So what about you? Do you root for the sports, “Go Team! Do The Thing!” and all that? Do you play any sports or did you when you were younger? Write those things down! You never know when they might be useful to your writing!

Well, it’s Wednesday. We’re officially halfway through the week. Only two days left. We got this! Have a great night! I’ll see you tomorrow!

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