I played rec baseball from kindergarten through my sophomore year of high school. I had a few good years when I was 8, 10, and 12, where I made all stars, and back then it was my main hobby. I always get a kick out of telling people that when I was in 2nd grade, I was on a little league all star team with Cullen Harper, Hunter Cantwell (their dads coached it), and a guy who went on to play baseball at GA Tech. And I ended up...being me. I lost all of my baseball talent when I was 13 and never gained it back. I don't know if it was the fact that I was overweight (although, I was my whole life until right after I graduated high school), stopped caring because I had developed more intellectual interests, resented my dad for pushing me in it (he was always a good athlete and coached me most seasons I played), or some combination of those. I used to be really into following baseball and at one time wanted to be a baseball historian, but that stopped around the time that I graduated high school. I don't play baseball any more and I rarely watch it, but part of me still loves the game. My favorite sport now is probably basketball, and it is another one that I played in rec leagues when I was a kid. I am the stereotypical 6'3'' white boy who can shoot but not do much else very well. I'll sometimes shoot around when I am at the gym, but I try to concentrate on the weightlifting when I am there. I really would like to get into some pickup games, though; it has been way too long! I also like golf. I played on courses with my dad a few times when I was in high school, but I haven't played much since. I would like to get back into it. I did Taekwondo when I was in elementary school and made it to a green belt, and then I did kickboxing in middle school but didn't stay with it long enough to make it past a white belt. I have thought about taking Muay Thai or MMA lessons but I don't really have the extra money right now. I need to find the time and money to play more sports!
I will fuck anyone's shit UP at Super Smash Bros (64 and Melee, forget that abomination called Brawl but I'll fuck your shit up there too).
Coach-pitch baseball as a kid, but stopped when I moved out of CT. I wish I'd stuck with it, I was great at making contact (albeit, you know, coach-pitch). Played one year of Pop Warner football - cornerback, third string wideout, garbage-time nose tackle. My crowning achievement was recovering a fumble during practice. Played basketball in middle school, I was amazingly awful due to having no shot and being short. Should have joined the boxing team in college with my friends, but didn't want to wake up early to do roadwork. As an adult I'm more into lifting (not recently though). I'm laughably undersized for everything except soccer. Indian genetics ain't so great. But no one tried harder in gym class, so I guess that counts for something. I'm a New England sports fan; I mostly watch football, playoff baseball, Premier League soccer, and college basketball. Recently both hockey and rugby have really grown on me. They're the only two sports I will go out of my way to watch, even if my team isn't playing. I wish rugby was more popular in the US - most people here don't even know "rugby" refers to two distinct sports.
One thing I can never get over is how super-competitive grown adults can get playing in something as simple as a rec league game. Why does losing bother people so much? Now there's nothing wrong with winning, it's fun and brings a team together and besides-- there's not a dude on this board who remembers his SECOND blowjob. ...but I've seen guys slam their gloves in the dirt with disgust in a softball game and yell at girls for swinging at bad pitches. I tried the dodgeball thing once... You would think in a non-sport people wouldn't take it seriously. But no, one time it came down where I was one-on-one with a girl on the other team. I knocked her out (of the game) and I was walking back to the wall she ran up behind me and smoked me in the back of the skull with the ball, point-blank. Dodgeballs don't really hurt but YEAH.... Go ahead and lose your collective shit over losing a silly match. After all, you had so much riding on this BIG GAME.
Undefeated in over 200 matches against two dozen different opponents. Fuck me, if there was a way to play Smash Bros. 64 online I'd quit my job and go pro. Captain Falcon all the way, bitches! FOCUS: I never stood out in any sport. I enjoy sports, but my true love has always been cooking, since my wee days of tagging along with my mom to her job at the bakery. It's also worth noting that despite living in Canada my whole life and quite literally being surrounded by skating rinks, I have never learned to skate. I can however, slice vegetables and other foods blindfolded and with near uniform precision.
Baseball, basketball, and soccer were my sports. I stopped basketball xand soccer in high school (was also a band geek, and that took a lot of my spare time) but kept up baseball. Strangly I now coach football, which I only played 1 year of when I was 9 or 10. I still did some adult league softball stuff up until about 3 years ago. Like Crown Royal, I got kind of disgusted with how competitive those guys got. A lot of the ultra competitive guys are just (sadly) trying to relive the good old days when they ruled their high school as star athletes, then flamed out. I got sick of them and just stopped playing.
Skiing/snowboarding, and I guess if diving counts then diving. Love a casual game of volleyball, and relaxed skateboarding. I played lacrosse and soccer in high school and I also swam. Occasionally compete with my university's club freestyle ski/snowboard team but it's incredibly disorganized. We've got a practice this weekend though so I'm looking forward to learning some new stuff: punch frontflips and either switch backflips or switch 3's. Should be a blast.
I was an ok baseball player when I was younger, but I love the sport. I ran cross country and track in high school. Now I just golf occasionally.
Snowboarding is my favorite activity in the world. I only get on the hill/mountain 10-20 times a year, but a smile never leaves my face when I'm there. The local hill only has a 300 foot vertical drop, and I still love it. I currently plot my move to Colorado/Vermont in my free time so I can have a real mountain as my local place. I'm fat. But I'm still better than 90% of the people out there. I also play Golf two to three times a week form the spring to fall. I'm fairly decent. But by no means a pro. I did win my league this year, but that isn't saying much since the average score on 9 holes for the league was north of 50. I play sand volleyball all summer also. But I am terrible at that and just use it as an excuse to drink heavily with my friends. In High School I played golf and tennis. I only played tennis so I could lose weight for golf. I was a four year letterman in Golf.
Similar to Jwags, I'm a pretty decent pickup at all sports, but never had the body for it. Unlike Jwags, I never hit that college growth spurt. My first love was basketball and I learned quickly how to be a solid pass first point guard due to the size disadvantage I had. I still have some pretty solid handles, speed and court vision, but I'm the type of person to make a difficult layup in the lane, but biffs on a 2 on 1 fast break. Junior year of high school I got into running and wasn't terrible. I ran my first season in jordans because I had no idea that such a thing as "running sneakers" existed. By senior year I almost made state qualifiers in track, but missed it by a 2 seconds. Prs for anyone that was a runner would know I was decent, but nothing spectacular. 4:40 mile 2:03-800 I want to really get into some kind of boxing or MMA. My shoulders aren't great though so I'm not sure that would be ideal.
I played basketball in high school and was a pretty decent shot. They had just come out with the 3 pointers and I could make those like nobody's business, pretty much from anywhere on the court, although I was better on the left side since I'm left-handed. I was normally a forward, occasionally a guard, and rarely (as in once) a center. We had a short team my senior year and our normal 5'8" center was in foul trouble so for some reason, he decided I was a suitable replacement. I'm 5'3". And the team we were playing had a 6'1" gangly center. I still remember getting the ball turning around and this girl coming at me, arms waving. She looked like one of those inflatable man that car dealerships have outside when promoting sales. Like this: Stuffed that ball right in my face without even trying hard. When I went to college I joined an intramural team and we signed up for everything: football (quarterback!), softball, badminton and a 3 x 3 basketball tournament that we won. It was sponsored by Bic so we got a plethora of free razors. Now I run and do other strength training to keep in shape.
I don't count snowboarding as one of my sports since I only have beginner skills and get out rarely. And beginner skills are not fun on a hill with snow conditions of ten snowflakes padding ninteen feet thick of re-barred concrete. I discovered early there is this nifty little snafu called "catching your heel-side" which is a really nice way of saying "Nailing your feet to the ground and then slamming your inflated lungs and face into the turf at the Speed Of Fear." The most painful sport. I have ever. Tried. It's a shame because I like and admire the sport, but I live in a sea of corn.
If you fall on your face you are catching your toe side, not heel. I used to get the shit beat out of me doing it. I broke my tail bone once and an arm once. Until I got a season pass when I was 18 I didn't have it figured ojt well. Stick with it and take a lesson or two.
I would really love to be good at just one sport or hobby, but, no, I suck at pretty much all of them. Asthma curtailed pretty much everything for me, since mine was (is) severe. Instead I got to hear of my mom's ice skating (she was a provincial age group selection as a kid) and netball games and my dad's tales of rugby and running at school in the U.K.. I played cricket for most of elementary and the beginning of high school. My hand-eye coordination is OK with PC games but was pretty much crap with cricket. I could bowl a little but not well enough. I was also not great in the field (asthma means not much running). I never tried my hand with rugby or association football outside of the odd pick-up game, because running. I tried with muay thai later in high school and persisted for about 9 months but I could not get the range of movement required to actually progress in the sport (apparently due to a congenital issue with my hips - I have very little outward rotation in my legs, which makes kicking rather difficult, at about 30% of the range of the majority of people) - I imagine that issue would have curtailed all sports for me, anyway. I'm one of the few who sucked equally badly at academics and sports. I'm not even that awesome at PC games. I also suck at sex, so I guess it's safe to say I suck at everything, even breathing (thanks asthma, you horrible cunt).
But at least you maintain a positive attitude! Focus: growing up I was shithouse at all sports-related endeavours. I had terrible eyesight, little co-ordination, and no cardio. I also didn't understand that you have to practice something for decent amount of time to get good at it; I think I assumed that if I tried to play football once and sucked, it was clearly ordained by the universe that I should go back to the books which didn't hurt my precious self-esteem. These days I box, train bjj, and do some general mma / grappling work. I'm proud of my abilities in all of them; my footwork is good enough that I can throw combos while keeping my weight centered in the ring, and I get more than my fair share of subs thanks to a naturally large frame. That said, objectively I'm terrible at all of them. Last night I got subbed by a 5', 140kg guy who is literally in danger of a heart attack everyone time he moves and has to break between rounds for chest pain. I've been boxing solidly for 9 months now, and have been grappling for about 3. I only started the pure bjj a month or so ago. I'm really looking forward to seeing how much I can improve in the coming years. Oh, and I play beach volleyball now and again.
I wrestled for a season and a half in 8th grade, regular season and a spring league. My family was as far away from sports as you could get unlike most of my friend's whose parents pushed them to compete. My friends talked me into it but the concept of conditioning day in and out, missing holiday breaks, and skipping Thanksgiving meals to practice or cut weight turned me off. Having never competed in sports before I went 4 and 4 on the B team and never caught the spark of competition. I quit the first day of wrestling my freshman year. My sport, I guess you could say, was dirt biking. Never done competitively. Just trail riding on weekends. It is insanely fun and I plan on getting back into it this coming spring. Honestly, once I hit college boozing became my main pastime.
Wrestling is also a great varsity sport for a little guy (which I was) because you only go up against guys your size. It was my favourite but it really is gruelling and your friends call you a fag a LOT.