A No-Win Situation

In Defense of Non-Competitive Sport.

- Tracey Lothian

When I was very young, the only sport I participated in was gymnastics. In those days, parents might only allow you to join a single extra-curricular activity. Two-car families weren’t as common, and there just wasn’t that prevailing culture where you were encouraged to be all things to all pursuits – a musical, athletic, artistic, genius philanthropist with a part-time job and an investment account at 11 years old. Now we are deep into an unexamined custom of producing over-scheduled, over-tired, anxious kids dealing with pressure to excel and accept that this is an ideal pursuit. I digress…but only a little. Back to gymnastics…I loved it and I was good at it. I didn’t need three other activities because it alone kept me very busy with daily practice and competitions on the weekends. It was thrilling to attempt and achieve a new move, perfect an elusive one, and receive praise from my coaches and parents. But I never did embrace the aggressive competitiveness – the feeling that the other gymnasts, even my own teammates, would delight in seeing me fail; that my coaches’ own sense of accomplishment may have been riding more on my ability to beat other clubs than it was resting on their part in my own personal acquisition of skill. So, in middle school, with the growing sense that I could either be a high-calibre gymnast or a regular kid, but not both, I abruptly quit.

Are we having fun yet?