Calling all Sports Superfans: Would You Lie for Love?

"I love you, man!" "Aw! Come to papa!"

In the grand tradition of Sandra Bullock and Jesse James, Ross Gellar and his first wife Carol, and that governor from South Carolina who went MIA for two days to "hike the Appalacian trail", my marriage was based on a lie.  No, I'm not a neo-Nazi man whore, a closeted lesbian nor do I have a secret Argentinian mistress for whom I would abandon the government of an entire state to canoodle with but nevertheless my lie threatened to rock the very foundations of my early wedded bliss.

See, I did one of those terribly stereotypically girly things that I'm embarrassed to even call a girly stereotype much less cop to doing it.  I lied about liking to watch sports.

When my husband and I first met I was so charmed by his rakish good looks and blatant lack of propriety (he fell asleep on the front row of the very first day of class - and even drooled!) that I was determined to do anything to get him to keep hanging out with me.  This desire to be near to my crush led me to do several unfortunate things like inviting him to "take my dad's car and go get doughnuts at Smith's" (to which he replied witheringly, "What are you, 16?") and agreeing to sit on an ice block at the winter carnival until I won a free t-shirt (and hopefully his heart).  But the most egregious was my sudden interest in all things sports.


Up until I met him, I had never watched an entire game of any team sport.  Figure skating, sure. Swimming, yes (you've seen Michael Phelps, right?). Gymnastics, absolutely.  But no basketball, football, soccer, rugby, volleyball or even tennis match had ever washed over my bored retinas.  Having done everything I could to escape the horror of gym class in high school, I didn't even know the rules to any of those games much less who to scream for or what color to paint my face.  True story: in college I once went to a football game on a date.  I brought a 700-page novel to read.  I didn't even notice when he left me.  Another true story: in high school a friend's dad got me and a few girl friends first-tier seats to the final playoff game between the Bulls and the Jazz.  We left during half time because the cheerleaders sucked and we wanted Chinese food.  (My husband dies a little more every time I tell that story.)

But then love came into my life bringing not only mushy notes and roses but also sports.  Specifically, basketball.  My husband has always loved basketball.  College, pro, kiddie league - if it was there, he'd watch it (he's watching the NBA finals as I type this).  So I pretended to watch whatever he was watching so I could go to the sports parties with him and snuggle up in the stands with him and wear his Utah Jazz sweatshirt so I could smell him (this was back when the Jazz were good).

I know.  I want to smack myself too.  It's girls like me that give girls a bad name.  It's bad enough that I hate watching sports.  But to lie about it?

And then we got married and it all stopped.  Instead of the final four, I was glued to Felicity (ohmygoodness SHE CUT HER HAIR).  When he suggested an away game date night, I made plans to go away... to the Indigo Girls concert.  When he bought me my own school mascot t-shirt I wore it every day... to bed.  He felt betrayed.  He'd thought he'd found one of those cool girls that every guy dreams of but exist far less in reality than they do in Doritos commercials.  Instead he got Bill Walton, if Bill Walton narrated the Miss America pageant.

To this day I still feel bad about my trickery.  And this guilt has led to me to occasionally watch something sports related with him.  I have discovered that team sports are not as boring as I thought they were!  For instance, you have Venus Williams' flesh-toned undies and crazyawesomeinsane tennis costumes to keep you glued to tennis:

Hee!  She gets swack* too!!

And with moves like these, no wonder soccer is the number 1 sport in the world!

Any sport that has fans like these must have a good sense of humor:

And then there is my husband's beloved basketball:

Just awesome.

This is pretty much exactly how I play basketball.  

And this may be the best sports picture ever taken.  How could I not love this game??

Have you ever lied to impress a date?  Do you like watching team sports?  What do you think about Venus Williams' underwear - distracting and unsportsmanlike or fun?

*That would be Gym Buddy parlance for sweaty crack.  We're gross, I know.

Sports: Do You Play to Win?

Well that's a bummer.

The leaves changing color, the nip in the air, the never ending back-to-school nights with their ten-page supply lists are all signs of the season change, sure, but nothing announces the advent of fall in suburbia like the pitter-patter of little soccer cleats across a field. (That would be football for everyone outside the States. It was probably unnecessary to clarify that but I have one surprisingly dedicated reader in Singapore and I'll be rather disappointed if I ever lose them.)

Raise your hand if you played soccer as a kid. I imagine that includes everyone. Tying on your shin guards and wrestling those tube socks up over your knees is a right of passage for children everywhere. But so is something else: getting your butt kicked. In fact, if you were me, that was pretty much all soccer entailed. (And softball and basketball and volleyball and football. True story: I was the only girl on my high school Powder Puff team to get not a single second of playing time in a game.)

These days things have changed. With the advent of non-competitive leagues and a general aura of Everyone's a Winner, kids spend a lot less time losing than I did. Many have griped about this, saying that we are coddling our kids and it makes them weaker, unable to handle real world defeat when it smacks them across the face in adulthood. But I, for one, actually find it refreshing. My childhood spent sucking at every conceivable group sport left me with a lifelong hatred of group sports that I have only been able to overcome in my late twenties. I'll admit it: I still get jittery playing something as simple as a pick-up game of frisbee.

The difference in these viewpoints is how you see the purpose of sports. Despite having a very competitive nature, the main purpose of sports for me is to exercise and to have fun. For many other people, however, it is to win. This has played out in an interesting fashion in my kids.

This fall the husband and I decided to enroll our two eldest boys in the city soccer league, non-competitive division. I figured they'd get some fresh air and learn about teamwork. If things went really well they might even learn the rules of the game - a feat I never accomplished in all my time on the field. This is exactly what my five-year-old got. His team has no goalie and players routinely put themselves on the sidelines when they'd rather play with their dinosaurs than the other kids. Snack time is the highlight. They have lost every single game.

Compare that to my seven-year-old's team. Their coach and half their players are from the competitive league and apparently use the non-competitive league as a warm up for their season. They have assigned positions, complicated plays and drills that involve an amazing amount of coordination. Not only have they won every single game but my son came home this last time shouting, "We beat 'em 16 to 1! And that was only because Coach told us to let them get one in at the end!" Cue the sad violins for the opposing team.

As you would expect, this caused many tears from the five-year-old and hours of bragging from the seven-year-old (not that it takes much to induce either crying or bragging in our house these days). You'd think that this would be evidence to run the team in the latter manner. And yet, despite my older son's joy at winning - and I say this with great love - he's by far the worst player on his team. This has led his coach to say, within his hearing, "Only kick the ball to Andersen if he's the only person around and then stay right on it." You should have seen his big puppy eyes fill with tears when he asked me why no one would pass him the ball. He also only gets assigned to play one defensive position in the very back, where he never sees the ball much less touches it. The other parents whisper things like "state college" and "band scholarship" behind their hands and won't look me in the eyes.

Of course it all makes me very upset. Come on, that's what I do. The husband is more zen about the whole thing saying about both sons, "Eh, they're having fun. They're learning stuff." The tears that I see as heart-breaking he sees as character-building. It's not just our family that's divided on the group sports issue. When I posted on Facebook about how I'm not cut out to be a soccer mom (I believe I actually used the phrase "soccer sucks" 'cause I'm mature like that), I got an amazing array of responses - everything from total agreement to total disdain leading me to conclude that soccer, not Al Franken, is the great polarizing force in our generation.

So now I have to know your opinion! When you play sports, do you play to win? What is your philosophy about kids and sports? In the picture above, which guy is getting the worse end of the deal? Seriously, I've been looking at it for like 10 minutes and I still can't decide.

PS> Thank you so much to everyone who left me a comment on my Compulsive Pregnant Exerciser post - your kind comments, prayers and support got me through this weekend! I can't tell you all how much it means to me!!