Friday, September 06, 2002

I am a sports fan

Today I watched the U.S. Open women's semi-finals. I love watching sports.

I grew up doing so. There was always a sporting event on our television every weekend. Mom did the laundry and ironed. Dad sat in his black recliner and drove Mom crazy by offering comments on the plays, the players, the coaches, and the referees. We knew where to find them on the weekends. 

Every significant sports tournament graced our television. Besides the obvious, the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NCAA Finals and the Olympics, we watched the Indianapolis 500, the Kentucky Derby and the Masters. Breakfast at Wimbledon was a massive ordeal in our house.

While we studied sports in P.E. at school, those classes consisted of learning the rules, but then we graded on how well we performed various activities from those sports. Things like how well we could serve a volleyball into taped off sections, each representing a grade. Or how well we performed a routine on the uneven parallel bars. Or graded on how high we jumped over the bar or how far into the sandpit.

Please. I received a better education in my own home, listening to my parents.

I know how to keep the scores. I can keep the stats on players in any sports. I learned about golf and baseball sitting in the stands, watching my brother play. I learned tennis from lessons I was forced to take as a child, and I learned to swim from my mother. I bowled on a Saturday league where I excelled and won multiple patches and trophies. And basketball...well, I am a Hoosier. That was a given.

The rest I learned by watching television. And I love all of it.

Today, watching tennis, I realized that my bucket list would include attending many sporting events. I want to see the U.S. Open and Wimbledon. I'm want to experience a Pittsburgh Steelers game in person, and heck, I'd even walk the course at the Masters.

I get a rush watching sports. I'm very competitive and very vocal. I pump my fists like Jimmy Connors, and I scream like Bobby Knight. I like that I can dance with excitement like the Chicago Bears in the end zone. It's exhilarating!

I can't imagine not having sports in my life. I hope one day I can pass that on to the girls. Maybe they too will want to join me on the couch and listen and learn as I did. I'm grateful to my parents for a lot of things. A love of sports is high on the list.




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