Never the Same IC #7: Dodging the Ball (Games)

We continue with the true-life story of Kirk, who didn't have a lot going for him early in life but that may change. We now cover his experiences participating in high school sports.

Kirk’s Sports Days: Dodging the Ball (games) IC#7

Cue: “Dreamer” https://youtu.be/7fdAFmtq-o8

Stepping back in time again to focus on another subject area in Kirk’s true-life story, we first look back to his freshman year and explore the onset of his sports participation. Anyway, Kirk dreamed of becoming a perfect male physical specimen who was stronger, faster, more agile something like the Six-Million Dollar Man if any you readers know about him. So, the determined skinny, wimpy boy with straight teeth had dreams, though rather huge, nebulous dreams, possibly impossible dreams, what will this episode reveal? Will it show proof as Kirk’s story had hinted at earlier�"was Kirk a bit mentally deran�"challenged?

Up through Junior High School Kirk pushed to improve and he did�"slightly. He had lost weight, became more active, interacted more with others, and through those steps obtained an improved appearance, self-esteem, and outlook. Gym classes and the horrifying, fear-provoking swimming classes remained his most detested class periods in school, so he didn’t improve much on the sports front. Even though he became a bit faster and more coordinated, Kirk still wasn’t really that great in any of the ball sports. At least by junior high he could struggle halfway up the climbing rope which is much better than barely holding up his own weight and dangling his feet off the floor back when he was chubby.  

Nevertheless one sport in gym class became his favorite early on. Yep, that’s right, he had a favorite. Kirk maybe didn’t win very often or not ever, but he did like competing in the one sport that didn’t require a whole lot of speed, skill, coordination, or muscle mass and that was Dodgeball. Those factors contributed to why he learned to like it. He thought, principally, the game only required balls.              Kirk found that he enjoyed the adrenaline rush of committing oneself to sure death by blistering thrown balls from the other side of that line on the floor. At the whistle, he’d race to the lined up balls in the center of the court and grab a ball. Was he courageous or foolhardy? Because the quick, tough athletes usually arrived there first, he’d get stung right off the start over fifty percent of the time.  With luck, fancy footwork and some quick body contortionism, he sometimes made it through the first barrage. Then, he’d get a shot off and maybe take out one of those tough guys who’d really get pissed off that they got taken out by wimpy Kirk because he didn’t have to throw the ball that hard, he just had to make contact.

After the initial rush and bodies began to fall by the wayside, Kirk’d back off from the point blank line, but sooner or later he’d feel that wallop of a viciously thrown ball. Maybe that burn aside the head, shoulder, back, or side made up half the fun. Maybe he relished the pain. Anyway, Dodgeball proved an exception for Kirk. Dodgeball became the one ballgame where Kirk’s relationship with ballgames began and ended but then again that didn’t stop him from trying harder to play other ballgames…

Being self-conscious about becoming fat again, he thought getting into high school sports would be the way to go to achieve the goal of remaining slim and gain some muscle mass. His orthodontist had told him that he would be handsome with straight teeth and slim physique someday and that was a goal to be sure.

For some unbeknownst reason even to himself, he decided that football would be the sport to try out for even though he hardly had ever thrown a football, and he didn’t understand how to play the game. Really. But that didn’t stop him! Maybe the macho image of big, burly football players drove him in that direction, but at this late juncture, who really knows?  At the same time, the other two fall sports of Cross Country running and Lacrosse seemed rather uninspiring for the former and totally questionable for the latter seeing he didn’t even know what the game was except that teachers mentioned in history class that Native Americans had played it.

On the day of the first football practice, a couple weeks before school actually began, the unruly mob of boys fresh from summer vacation descended into the basement locker room like a herd of buffaloes stampeding across the Great Plains along with an uncertain Kirk meekly bringing up the rear. The echoing shouts like harassed monkeys proved deafening in the confined tunnels leading to the bowels of the football dungeon more innately called the boys’ locker room. As required, the boys had to bring their own shower supplies and a towel with Kirk hanging onto his like a shield as he searched for an unused locker. It seemed most of the sniveling wolf pack had already marked their territory by claiming a locker beforehand.  The maddening boy crowd and the strange basement setting confused Kirk even before actually learning or doing anything associated with football. He hadn’t clue to what was going to unfold. One thing for sure, gym classes had never been this bad.

Coach “Budda” and his scrawny assistant coach, Ted, struggled out of the back storeroom with two huge, old bulging boxes and coach shouted in his rattily basso voice, “suit up!” Probably too many donuts and cigarettes.

Incredulous, Kirk watched as the ravenous mob dove into the box like a pride of lions on a downed gazelle. Well, the school’s sports teams were the Tigers after all. The wild boys pulled out shoulder pads, butt pads, elbow pads, crotch cups, three-quarter length pants, and discolored, stained jerseys. Last but not least was the pile of spiked shoes in the bottom. Overwhelming for the teen boy Kirk, he searched through the leavings to grab what he could and taking a cue from the others, he pieced his seemingly armored uniform together. Up to that point, Kirk hadn’t seen a jock strap before and wondered if he had to wear one of those strange genital retention contraptions known as GRCs. He decided no because he didn’t have one.  

After all the other boys clickity-clacked out the basement exit and up the stairs heading out to the field, a sweating, confused Kirk finally pulled himself together, or so he tried. Being the last one emerging from the dungeon, he held up his pants with one hand with the other trying to keep the shoulder pads in place. Coach Budda already had the boys lined up running wind sprints back and forth while the big older boys took turns pushing the four man skid around with the assistant coach weighing it down.

The boy joined in for a few sprints, but trying to run in spikes while holding his equipment in place at the same time proved too much of a challenge in the stuffy, humid fall heat. When the coach turned away, Kirk slunk away to the dungeon and got rid of all that strange equipment stuff. Distraught, he decided sports might not be for him after all. What an absurdly stupid game that required a person to wear all that damn protective gear.  Maybe the rules should be changed so there wasn’t a need for armored protection in these modern times.  Just saying.

Cue: “Born to Run” https://youtu.be/f3t9SfrfDZM

All dejected with his eyes to the floor as he walked his way up and then out the first floor hallway, he raised his vision to notice on the bulletin board that the Cross Country team was accepting all participants no matter their running ability because they were severely short of runners. He thought on that for a day. Couldn’t be too hard, just running over hill and dale right? He signed up on the short list.

Well, the fall proved pretty warm, and in contrast to the weighty paraphernalia required for football there wasn’t any heavy equipment to deal with to run Cross Country just flimsy shorts and sleeveless jerseys, at least for the running meets. So wearing his own shorts and a tee shirt, Kirk started out with the small team.

In Cross Country practice, Kirk could run along with the other ten runners amid pack while running having various combinations of long, slow runs, wind sprints, and short leg-burning bursts up extremely steep hills.  He thought at the start of the season that seeing he ran mid-pack in those early practices, he’d do quite well running on the cross country team. Except it didn’t go quite the way he expected.  By the time they competed in the team’s first meet, Kirk ended up in last place. It seemed that everyone improved immensely on the team except him or perhaps they just performed much better at events. No, the others became faster than him in practices as well. The season went like that with him usually taking last places with an exception of a little fatty who could hardly run from a small Podunk school.

Making a long boring sport short, one memorable race took place at the end of the season in a large park. The team went to this the All-School Cross Country event in the “big city.” The sports season placed the event at the end of fall, perhaps you’d call it early winter; it was a cold, windy, snowy day.  Numerous buses brought probably over two hundred runners to compete. Kirk lined up toward the back of the crowd in his flimsy shorts and sleeveless jersey just like everyone else despite the cold and snow. 

With the gun, they were off! They raced over hill and dale and around sharp slippery grass turns. In short order, most of the runners disappeared out ahead and those around him became sparser by the mile. The scenery along the park trail made the run memorable and because he finished fourth�"from the last. He made his way back to the warm idling school bus where his team mates waited patiently. No one spoke a word.     

Moving on to another season, winter brought a new line up of sports: swimming, basketball and wrestling. Swimming was out of the question. Swimming wasn’t even a consideration because the boy hated the water and couldn’t swim a lick. He swam sort of like a rock. Not much floatation, no real propulsion. And because of the schools swim class policy for the boys swimming nude proved a nightmare for the boy though it was well known that the swimmers wore trunks for practice and competition.

Kirk had known about boys’ notorious swimming class ahead of time, but it was still hard to manage. No trunks were worn; they all swam nude. Kirk never saw so many swinging dicks in one place in all of his life, and the situation made him rather uncomfortable being naked himself. He didn’t understand the reasoning behind it, and he wanted desperately to cover up preferring not to look around at all. Starting from day one until the last time he had to attend swim class, when the boys were required to dive in and swim a length, he dropped in feet first and dog paddled forward, not able to make a pool length in half a swim period while all the time fearing for his life knowing that bottom of the pool was way down there.  Truly, he would never be the same after those traumatic sessions. After the freshman year, swimming was optional and without a second thought Kirk opted out of trying out for the swimming team. Moving on to basketball.

 This All-American ball game became a non-starter because Kirk knew with his lack of hand/eye coordination experience from trying to play in gym class he’d never make the team; wrestling, well, he didn’t know much about wrestling, but as an established physical sport he decided to go into that. Kirk thought wrestling’s all-around physical demands would help him get into shape and being an outdoor country boy he should do okay for himself though other than during Dodgeball he wasn’t very aggressive or a fighter.  He signed up on the board.

Well, wrestling lived up to its reputation as a grueling sport. Practices took place in the other dungeon of the gym, and the wrestling workouts proved to be a mix of group exercise drills, runs up and downstairs, massive weight lifting, and wrestling move instructions. The range of body weight classes meant different sizes of boys from featherweight to heavyweight would fit into the wrestling lineup. Some of the boys proved rather impressive in strength and agility right from the beginning of the season. Of note, one boy in a lightweight class weighing around a hundred pounds could do Spiderman moves with ease. This spidery guy could run full speed up to a padded pillar there in the dungeon, jump and stick there just like the superhero. Impressive!

During the wrestling meets, the little guys showed amazing abilities in their speed, strength and agility none of which, sadly, Kirk possessed. On the other side of the spectrum from the lightweights stood the star of the team, John a senior, the big, black heavyweight.  As the team captain, he often led the exercises performing fifty (or more) non-stop pushups without breaking a sweat or losing his breath. At the end of each long set, he would force the team to hold in the up position for a minute or two. Groaning began all around as bodies here and there would flop flat on the workout mats. Kirk usually would be the first to give in.

John went undefeated that year which was believable when watching him in action. In some matches, the huge muscular specimen called John would immediately grab his opponent from the whistle, lift him into the air and pin his opponent’s shoulders directly to the mat. The match would be over literally in seconds. Amazed at the feats of strength and agility of all the different weight class wrestlers, Kirk had neither the speed nor agility of the light wrestlers nor the muscular power of the heavier wrestlers. But to say the least, by his sophomore year, Kirk could climb all the way up the rope at a pretty good clip, rap his knuckles on the top plate and shimmy on down. All those years of dangling his feet felt like a bad memory.

Cue: “I Won’t Back Down” https://youtu.be/nvlTJrNJ5lA

The boy called Kirk took the failure all in stride and always gave it his best by keeping up with most of the tough wresting practices. Being a tall, skinny boy didn’t help because he never could develop hard muscle no matter how hard he tried, and try he did. Unlike Cross Country running where he didn’t really run in his off time, he ran and worked out at home in an honest effort to be stronger. He dreamed�"wanting to be stronger, faster, and more agile, though apparently not putting enough time and effort into it to become the physical specimen of his dreams.

Even though he didn’t gain muscle and didn’t have any fat to shred, he still had to watch what he ate on match day because of the required weigh-ins. Along with most of the wrestlers whose weight hovered near the weight class limit Kirk would live on oranges for the day. At weigh-in time, it became heartbreaking for the more proficient wrestlers, who were really hyped to compete, when they missed their weight limit by mere fractions and couldn’t compete. Kirk didn’t miss a single weigh in not that the fact amounted to much when you aren’t first string. Fingernails often had to be trimmed when inspected at weigh-in times.  You don’t want to slice skin or gouge your opponent’s eyes out!

Placed in one of the lighter weight classes, 120 pounds, Kirk should have been able to hold his own against opponents, but his opponents turned out to be fireplug muscle-bound quick movers. His lack of hand/eye coordination and slow thought process proved his undoing out on the mat. In every match, he knew exactly how John’s opponents felt when they were picked up into the air, flipped over and down to be pinned literally in seconds. Kirk experienced that many times. An utter failure in all his matches, he never threw in the towel and gave in. He just kept showing up for more physical and psychological abuse.

To make a long wrestling story short, this nonchalant acceptance of seemingly self-imposed abuse proved symbolic of his perseverance to work hard but never succeed, at least in wrestling and sports in general�"so far. Anyway, plenty enough boys always showed to make two wrestling teams, varsity and junior varsity, or if you may, second string wrestlers who weren’t good enough to compete for team points on the varsity squad. Lots of times Kirk would sit it out as an unopposed third string. When Kirk wrestled as a sophomore, one opponent set a new record in fastest pins�"pinning Kirk to the mat�"to be clear in something like 14 seconds. In another case, one of his opponents pinned Kirk and jumped up into a great big celebratory display with yelling, leaping and dancing about, this match being the only one the guy had ever won. The teen boy Kirk took it all in stride.

 And so it went on for four years, competing very little, but when he did it always ended the same, flat on his back. The coach never had a talk with him, inquiring if Kirk wanted to continue experiencing such disgrace. Maybe the coach assumed Kirk would give up and quit like others who would probably would in similar circumstances. Then, perhaps seeing the boy always came to practice and did as told the coach decided to keep him on and let him continue. After three years, finally, as a senior, the sharp-dressed boy wouldn’t even bother getting into his wrestling outfit eventually becoming the home match scorekeeper. Well, anyway, the wrestling team had scores kept very well and accurate. Kirk didn’t really mind at all the way things turned out.   

So, springtime meant a whole new lineup of sports. Baseball and Track and Field were the two main sports of springtime. Seeing the specter of requiring good hand/eye coordination arising again as a central downside for baseball and not having much experience in that sport either, the boy chose Track and Field. This sport proved a whole new array of required skills with many possible events to compete in, but for Kirk it all boiled down to running seeing he had some background mileage from Cross Country. Of course, the field part of Track and Field looked fun and seemed inviting, but he wasn’t strong enough for shotput or quick and coordinated enough for javelin or discus, and pole vaulting? Well, that just looked plainly dangerous. He did try a few field sports like the high jump but didn’t have enough spring action and the hurdles were just plain ridiculous for anyone to run. Messing around, he tried running the low hurdles a couple times, but Kirk just couldn’t stretch his legs up and out that far.

 After a few practice runs and the fact that the same track coach ran Track and Field as Cross Country, he ended up in the 880. NO ONE wanted to run the 880. That distance was too long for sprinters and too short for long distance runners, so there were always openings in that event. Long story short: he didn’t do too well. He also competed in the hop, skip and jump and the long jump though he never got close to average distances. Nevertheless, Kirk pressed on.

As a junior, he was definitely stronger and more fearless in gym classes. Faster on his feet, a bit more coordinated and stronger made him nearly a force to be reckoned with on the Dodgeball court. Face to face with bigger players on the line, he’d sometimes get a good point-blank shot off early on or even deflect an incoming ball with his own ball. Besides that game, not only could he climb the ropes at a good clip, but he learned to master climbing the rope upside down. Yep, really! With a little practice at it, he just didn’t climb up to rap his knuckles on the ring, climbing upside down; he’d hang up there and tapped on the ring with his toe! Kirk felt proud of that accomplishment. It seemed like a bonus feat to show off for the girls especially Dee Dee!  

Back to Track and Field. One of his friends, a usual sprint competitor in the 50 and 100 was for some reason put in the lineup for the 440. That’s one complete lap of the track. The friend didn’t get or ask advice about running said lap, but apparently he hadn’t even watched the event before.

 At the gun, the friend took off like he was used to�"sprinting at full speed with all his might! By the first turn, he ran way out in front while the pack motored on behind him. By the back stretch, it was obvious that he had lost steam with the pack bearing down on him. By the third turn, they had almost caught him and by the fourth turn the leaders of the pack had caught and passed him. By the finish line, Kirk’s friend ended up dead last. Kirk had mixed feelings for not telling his friend beforehand how to run the event, but he assumed the friend should have known better. Kirk felt like telling his friend that he shouldn’t feel too bad about taking last place because he did poorly all the time and knew what it felt like to come dead last. However, deep down Kirk thought at least he hadn’t ever done anything that blatantly stupid! 

Kirk soldiered on through four years of Cross Country running, Wrestling and Track without any stardom, but he missed very few practices and always showed for meets despite knowing his predestined personal outcomes. So Kirk took part in three team sports without playing with a ball and supported his school’s teams with his 100% presence and constant full team participation and cheerful encouragement, and one can be very proud of that.

 As a successfully graduating senior, after the four years of participation he was awarded a sports jacket with letters in three sports. He had persevered and was better for it, perhaps much better than before because he was faster, stronger, and more determined than ever.

As mentioned beforehand in the preceding episode, the school’s counselor told Kirk that he stood out as a shining example for the upcoming students as one who persevered and who never gave up in the face of enduring adversity. Kirk doubts all that B.S. the counselor said and figured that no one ever heard anything about his pitiful four-year sports career. But beyond a doubt, Kirk was never the same after four years of sports.