How to participate in sports when you have no athletic prowess
I am as unathletic as they come, but in honour of this week’s Sports Issue, I present to you some of the many ways I’ve attempted to engage with sports over the years.
Watch cricket “for the culture”
To be Indian is to love cricket. I’ve watched every ICC Cricket World Cup since I was 11 and was also a dedicated fan of the Indian Premier League for a few years. Something about the Kohli-Gayle-de Villiers trifecta from the Royal Challengers Bangalore really sucked me in. Is cricket boring? Sure. But I love the players, not the game.
Play badminton
Unless you competitively play badminton, playing the sport does not require a whole heap of physical exertion. But it can still be a lot of fun. I was on the badminton team throughout high school and I’d recommend it to anyone who is void of athletic prowess but is looking for a good time.
Learn yoga from a white person
Yoga isn’t a sport, but damn is it hard. I attended two months of classes before promptly giving up. I joked that it was because my ancestors would be disappointed in me learning yoga from a white woman, but really it's because I didn’t cut the mustard. I'm sure my ancestors would find this significantly more disappointing.
Use your lack of sports knowledge as a way to flirt with people
I like boy. Boy like talking about sport. I listen. Boy like me. Ta-da! With that being said, it's always best to ask follow up questions instead of mindlessly absorbing sports chat, just to make sure you’re on the right track. Otherwise you’ll end up like me and mishear the basketball term ‘posterize’ as ‘pasteurise’.
Play ‘alternative sports’
Just because you suck at sport doesn’t mean you can't exercise your competitiveness in other ways. Board games and beer pong are your friends.
Become a mascot/waterboy
Want in on the action but lack the skills to actually play? Appoint yourself as your favourite local team’s hype-man-water-boy-mascot-extraordinaire! Our teams are only as good as the support staff around them. While I don’t have the experience to be a coach or the drivers licence to drive the team van, I’m not above dressing up as a furry animal and fetching players Powerade. Theoretically speaking.
Don't let my lack of athleticism deter you from reading our great features this week. Bridget profoundly links weightlifting to feminism, Maia encourages you to talk up walking, Lauren interviews Brent from Jump Jam, and Roshi discusses how athletes are subject to online bullying.
Newsrooms around the world have lost their shit because THE QUEEN DIED (!) and Salient’s news team is no different. We pay our (somewhat) respects to Her Majesty in our news section … only to showcase our favourite corporate tweets about her death in our culture section.
Also in news: tutors get paid peanuts by the uni, young people protest a disappointing conviction, and we profile two young candidates running for local body elections. If you don’t get out there and vote, I’ll personally bonk you over the head with this basketball.
Ngā manaakitanga,