Finally, my loathing of school hockey makes sense
I stood engulfed in misery wishing I were anywhere else but there. Rigid with cold and awkwardly clutching a hockey stick. Relegated to the position of defence, I was often away from the action. Although I can understand why — I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know the rules. I didn’t care for the game.
To be honest, I was only there to try and fit in, to be included. To do what everyone else was doing. But it was painfully boring.
The other girls ran around like a pack of spaniels. Tongues lolloping out and drooling with enthusiasm. They hooked themselves into the strategy of the game, its purpose. They yelled and wailed passionately. And yet, to me it all just felt a bit pointless.
Eventually I gave myself permission to fade away from the hockey scene. But being at a school obsessed with hockey and rugby I was discarded into the “not sporty” pile and ignored by the physical education teachers.
So rejected from the sporty label was I, that when I went on to win the school cross-country, beating all the hockey girls with ease, the same teachers who cast me aside doubled down and couldn’t even bear to congratulate me! Because I wasn’t one…