Were you spoilt for choice? Or was the only activity on offer: Dodge the chunky bully and keep hold of your dinner money?
The answer to this question is likely to vary depending on a few things like background and location in the world, but I'd be interested to hear about the options that were available to you during younger years.
All pupils in the UK have to do PE, or Physical Education, at school until they are 16 and the most popular sport at school is football, played by girls and boys. 1 I can't remember if that was the case 30 years or so ago, but I consider myself quite lucky with regards to the options I had from 6-16.
Throughout school, and as suggested above, football was my go-to activity of choice. Rain or shine, blizzards or a heatwave, I'd be out in the playground kicking a ball around. Sometimes it would go in the net, and sometimes (ok, once) it would go through the staff-room window, right where my form tutor was sitting with his morning coffee.
I'd also play for the school team (captain for a year or two in fact!), after school, and whenever it was daylight - and occasionally when you could barely see a thing. Not that you care about these things so much when you are small, but I'm grateful for being interested in a sport that has helped (for the most part) to keep the pies off me for many a year.
Physical Education (PE) at junior school (ages 7-11) was a bit basic and mainly due to the school not having either dedicated staff or decent equipment. One game we'd play was football cricket, which was a case of smack the ball as far as you can (but not on the roof) and run back and forth - I enjoyed that one I have to say, not so much the majority of the girls. Another game, which I forget the name of, would involve two teams trying to throw a sponge ball over the net and opposition to a team member standing on a mat. If your team member caught the ball then you went over to the mat to be a receiver also. That one favoured taller people, or at least people who could 'loop' a throw - some would be on the mat after one throw, others may take 20... or more.
There was of course Sports Day at school which involved such acclaimed sports as the Egg and Spoon race, but think I'll save that for another post :)
At high school, the options increased dramatically as their were trained staff and much more facilities available. I had a choice of high schools and went for the one offering football over rugby - posh egg chasers, pffft. And so the football continued at break-times, lunch time (usually with a bag of chips and pigeons trying to steal them or shit on you), and for the school team.
The school was fairly close to a leisure centre which had a reasonable pool, and I do distinctly remember getting better at swimming and moving up the levels. I'm still pretty pathetic if I look at how good my thirteen year old daughter is, but it's never been a major interest and I find it a bit boring to be honest.
Other games at school I enjoyed were Softball and Rounders. These normally took place with mixed teams, and the playing field was much more level as far as the sexes with some of the girls being pretty damn good at hitting and catching. Being a left-handed was pretty sweet for these sports. The bowler would call out 'left hander' and the fielders would move round leaving a gap where a right-handed person would often hit the ball. And so I'd just stand facing that way a little more and hit it that way. It didn't always work but when it did I enjoyed it a lot.
Occasionally (a week before sports day!), we'd get a go on some of the field athletics equipment. Discuss, Shot-putt, and for the kids without the crazed look in their eyes, Javelin. From what I can remember, the biggest lad won the Shot-putt, but the other activities involved more skill and technique and produced surprising results -e.g. non-members of the football team would be the best at times.
There would also be options to run - sprinting or longer distances but neither of those appealed to me at the time. I didn't see the point if their wasn't a game (ball) around the activity, although did go on to just run much more in later years. There was also a Table-Tennis club, a couple of Tennis courts, and even a small gym if you fancied climbing up a rope (I didn't).
I can't really think of any sports I missed out on that I was really desperate to do as a child, which could suggest either a small mind, or just being fairly lucky with the choices I was given. If I was being picky, a local Velodrome would have been nice!
What about you? Still playing your favourite game?
Cheers
Asher
