Early morning, musty locker rooms and physical movement. Sounds like a delightful recipe for a wonderful day, right? Not to mention confusing rules of sports never played and just a slight pinch of sexism here and there. Complaining aside, being one out of the three girls in Competitive Sports isn’t as bad as I may make it seem in this column. But it certainly is an interesting experience.
Let’s start with the early morning aspect. On B days, this class begins at 7:35 a.m. See, this would be totally cool for someone with normal coordination, but me being my clumsy self, this is a disheartening situation.
The second issue is that musty girls locker room. I have no idea who or what is making the girls locker room feel and smell like Lucifer’s restroom, but that is what I like to call a “situation.” Fortunately dressing out for this class doesn’t take very long. And the other two girls in class can share my pain.
Not so thankfully, dealing with your appearance after this class can be a struggle. Perfumes and deodorants do their job, but figuring out how to deal with post-ponytail hair and trying to get jeans on after physical exertion is dangerously close to becoming an art form. My fellow female classmates can relate, and thankfully making fun of our own appearances and being creative with our resources is a source of bonding and humor in the toasty locker room.
However, combine slightly impaired coordination due to being drowsy with playing a game you’ve never played before and you get one Lillie Wasserman throwing footballs to either the wrong team or in an area with no one in a ten-foot radius. Initially, flag football was daunting, and an unnamed team member may have made remarks such as “women are the worst,” among other insulting comments.
Thankfully, my skills have somehow improved. This may have been because the class switched up teams and I had supportive guys that would occasionally throw the ball to me, or because I decided to stop falling into stereotypes of women being not as great at sports. The main point is that by the end of the flag football unit, I had made two touchdowns and two two-point conversions. And I know what all of those terms mean. So boo-yah.
There will obviously be sexist undertones in any class mainly populated by males, but most people in the class are supportive of me and the other two girls. From hearing their experiences, it seems that they were thrown the ball just as often as the guys on the team as long as they showed effort. This seems like pretty fair criteria to me. The only sexist, yet advantageous, action that seemed to occur to one of my female classmates is that she would be able to advance far with the ball free of flag-grabbing because guys were afraid to touch her.
Overall, any P.E. class first thing in the morning can be a challenge, especially when playing competitive games. In fact, when I first noticed I was enrolled in this class, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. And although the locker rooms aren’t super jazzy, if there’s a room designated for sweaty human beings to store clothing and change, I don’t expect it to be the Ritz. And finally, as long as the hints of stereotypes aren’t full on sexist in this class (which they are not), it’s actually not too bad.