Were you the last one picked in sports?

In My Humble Opinion
41

All through grade school (in my case, through 8th grade). Usually for softball (I was tall for my age so sometimes I was picked for basketball, but I had no idea how to dribble or shoot, so the joke was on them).

There was a clear division between the boys who played in Little League and those who didn’t (I didn’t). I didn’t know how to hit, I didn’t know how to field, and I didn’t know how to throw. Now, these were gym “classes” so you would think that there would have been some teaching of these things, but such was not the case. The “teacher” would get the teams going and then we never saw him again until the end of the period.

Near the end of eighth grade I got tired of being such a klutz so I started watching the guys who knew how to field to see how they caught the ball when it was hit to them. Oh, you face the glove towards the ground so that it will bounce into the pocket instead of facing the glove up so that the ball bounces out of the glove. OK, I think I can do that. Then I got my chance - due to a lack of good players, I got posted at 3rd base one day. Someone hit a grounder to me. I caught it on the bounce! I threw it (badly) to 1st base, and the hitter was out. Cries of amazement all around!

Why in the bloody useless hell didn’t that fucking gym teacher ever show me that? Or anything else? Useless wad of scum, and waste of a salary. From 1955 to 1963, as far as I can see, he never taught any of us anything except how to do the Hokey Pokey.

42

Well, the first time this ever happened to me, I was somehow elected one of the captains. That is to say, I was picking a team, and Debbie, a good friend of mine, was also picking a team, to oppose my team.

And I just have to say this, somebody IS GOING to be last. Sorry. There is no way around it.

I grabbed one good friend who was an excellent athlete, beating out Debbie who also wanted her. I made sure to include my own very best but clumsy friend by about the third pick, and she didn’t speak to be for two weeks because she THOUGHT I was going to let her be last. She explained that you don’t pick good players, you pick your friends, obviously I didn’t know how that worked.

I really prefer the number-off method. Just better all around.

Those of you who think it was fun, choosing the person who was picked last, it was not.

At other times, I was picked early and disgraced myself by paying horribly, picked last and played astonishingly well, and all variances of these and things in between. Gym teachers never did get the number-off method.

43

The only time I remember being picked last was sophomore year co-ed PE. Two guys were picking teams. Another girl and I were new to the school and we got picked last, one of us to each team. It didn’t bother either of us since no one knew us and, being a fairly small school, all the other kids knew each other. We were called to our teams as New Girl #1 and New Girl #2. That didn’t bother me either.

44

Hmmm. Chubby, short, awkward, slow, lazy, weak, shy, and socially awkward. You do the math.

I didn’t get indignant getting picked near the last, since I understood I was at the very bottom of the heap athletically.

My parents made me play a sport, which in Alaska meant playing hockey. I was always the worst or near the worst player on my team, and I remember my teams coming in dead last most of the time. Maybe that was my fault?

The other thing is, I don’t remember trying really hard while playing, until I was a lot older. I was a slow skater, because I didn’t try to skate fast. I hung back and didn’t do squat, because I knew I sucked. I guess I was 13 or 14 when I realized that if you tried really hard and exerted a lot of effort you could skate a lot faster.

45

Every so often, outside of the usual low-impact sports like Rounders or French Cricket (look them up, folks), they’d put me in a team to play some complicated and aggressive sport that they had never told me the rules of*. It was compulsory, as a misguided attempt to “introduce” some kids to something new, but all it did was emphasise how horrible a weedy kid like me can be affected by having tough thick-skulled bull-necked lunkheads crash into me ten times an hour. Idiocy.

*Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport, but I don’t know the rules. They just assumed every Kiwi kid knows them, from osmosis.

46

Maybe towards the back of the pack for something like basketball, which I totally sucked at and didn’t like, but rarely, if ever, last. If I was, it didn’t bother me. I sucked at it, why would I be picked higher? Towards the front for games like soccer, dodgeball, and baseball or 16-inch softball. I enjoyed team sports and athletics in general, though–it fed my competitive nature. I do remember once getting annoyed at getting picked next-to-last for a pick-up game of baseball with a rubber ball that we’d play in the school parking lot, so I just channeled that anger into hitting a couple of home runs.

47

Yes, but it didn’t bother me; I knew I was a weakling with no particular sporting talent.

I was also the kid who got the ball kicked right in my face every time we played football. So many broken glasses. So many nosebleeds.

48

I was usually second-to-last or so. I managed to cultivate pride in my suckiness at sports, so it was simply an affirmation of a nerdiness I didn’t mind.

The cafeteria, on the other hand . . .

49

Sometimes and I don’t remember it bothering me.

As a matter of fact, it even turned out to be great a few times. When I was 16-17, we could play two volleyball matches simultaneously in high school. Since I was average as a player, I tended to be picked when all the good players had already been selected. Pretty often, that meant I had to play with the bad players but, since I was average, I was de facto one of the best players on the second court. Felt like a champ :D.

50

I went with never, but I can’t really remember that sort of team selection being used much at all.

Most of the informal lunchtime games at primary school didn’t really have teams. In winter it was mainly bullrush, and in summer cricket with everyone fielding and you got a bat if you took a wicket. Organised games had the teams selected by the teacher.

At high school it was pretty much all league at lunch time, just jump on whichever side had the least numbers was the rule. It usually ended up 30+ a side on a field, there wasn’t a lot of tactics involved just smash it up and try and break the line. Real sport was open entry, with a whole bunch of teams so everyone got to play. Rugby was weight for age, although by 15 I was in the third XV and playing in an open grade. I think my school fielded 12 or so teams in total,

Cricket was pretty much the same, but with fewer teams.

51

Never the last kid, but definitely usually amongst the last half. Whoever mentioned above about it being more about getting your friends on your team than talent or "winning’ pretty much nailed it.

52

Time to put on the depends…

Where I was picked depended entirely on the sport being played. Baseball, softball, kickball or football I would be among the top chosen because I could catch, throw and run. Basketball not so much (height has never been my forte). I don’t remember playing many other team sports while growing up, except occasionally soccer in PE class. None of us in rural GA knew enough about that game to figure out who should be picked first anyway!

53

Sound like every gym teacher I ever had in school. In terms of actually learning something, gym class was the most stupid waste of time of my entire adolescence. It was just a matter of the teacher telling us what activity to do, or what sport to play that day, and then leaving us at the mercy of the laws of the jungle. Then, the kids who were independently good got to humiliate the worse kids for a while, and the teacher could sit on the side line scratching his nuts and doing faff-all.

*Teach *me how to kick a ball. Show me a bit of technique. Something. At least pretend that you give a shit. I look like a twat out on that soccer field, my sense of self-worth is evaporating, and you’re doing *nothing *about it.

54

I honestly don’t remember. I was much taller and thicker than anyone else in the grade during all of elementary school. I couldn’t do the Presidential Fitness test worth a shit but I could shoot a basketball and knock the hell out of a baseball.

In middle school and high school I wasn’t the tallest anymore but I was still the biggest and was good at most sports. Turned out I had a knack for floor hockey and badminton.

I was (am) always fat and awkward looking and never the most popular girl so either I was chosen last because of popularity (girls did not give a shit about winning teams) and it didn’t bug me or I wasn’t chosen last and it didn’t bug me.

I’m one of the few people on this board who loved gym class.

55

I loved coed gym class before HS. Once I got to HS, our “gym class” started being things like doing aerobics to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” I defy anyone to love that.

56

Oh, goodness :stuck_out_tongue:

We lifted weights and played dodgeball and even flag football. There was a gymnastics section but I don’t remember a soundtrack! :smiley:

57

I still hate aerobics, turquoise sweatpants, and that song. :smiley:

58

Almost always, as I was a skinny kid. I got sweet revenge in high school, after honing my corner lot basketball skills over a couple of years. I could dribble with either hand, and hit the outside shot with regularity. When we got to the basketball phase in HS gym class, two guys were picking teams, and as usual I was still sitting there with a couple of other losers. But this time I was thinking: I’m going to make whoever doesn’t pick me pay for this. They had to substitute me, as those were the class rules, and when I got in I scored every time I touched the ball, stole the ball from almost anybody trying to dribble, drove past anyone who got in my way, and made them look like fools. I remember the satisfaction I felt when I saw shock and speculation in their faces.

I went in the first round in the next game. :smiley:

59

I actually didn’t hate gym class anymore, as such, when I got as far as high school. I mean, I was still shit at it, but my life turned around completely at that point. I suddenly had friends, girlfriends and a proper life. I was still socially awkward as all get out, and a total nerd, but I ran into a group of similar weirdos who accepted me. I also had one of those weird teenage growth spurt things, with the side effect that for a while I wasn’t pudgy anymore. More just thin and weird looking.

One side effect was that it no longer bothered me at all to be crap at sports.

Once, in HS gym class, we did orienteering. That weird thing where you take a map and navigate through the woods between points. But, of course, as usual, no one was paying attention to what we were doing, so I went off with a couple of other nerdy kids, and we mostly sat behind a rock, smoking cigarettes, before leisurely strolling back. I suppose we missed the entire following class, too. It was awesome. *That *is how you do gym class.

Come to think of it, I simply skipped a ton of gym class in HS, to the point where it’s amazing that they didn’t just flunk me. I did get a passing grade somehow. However, at that point it wasn’t because of angst and resentment anymore. Just pure laziness. And because I was such an annoying little punk, and that’s the sort of thing that annoying little punks do.

Ah, glorious days. I think I’m the only one on this board who loved high school. The happiest time of my life. Still a geek and a weirdo, but no longer the only one. And that made all the difference. Like the bee kid in the video to that song.

Anyway, now I’m just digressing. Sorry.

60

My father started me in little league in the middle of “C” league which was fast pitch. I had no idea how to hit fast pitch and never learned very well. Only had a couple hits, the rest were strike outs. But when I played in the neighborhood with the guys where we just lobed the ball at the batter I’d clobber it and over the summer learned to time a ground ball really well as we played on the field all the little league games were played. So it would still be in pretty decent shape when we played on it. Chosen last? Sorry, never.

Phu Cat