Pastoral Care - Secondary

Sport 

This should be an easy one to write about, yet in all the time I have been writing for Shining Lights, I never have. Curious. 

The simple narrative is easy to imagine – the benefits of exercise, being part of a team/club, adult mentoring, social interaction, discipline, grit, role models... I would have been lost without sport growing up; cricket all summer and league all winter. Highlights of school? 1976 Opens Cricket final and 1977 St George Opens League Knockout. The older I get, the better I was. 

Team sport was one of, and maybe even “the,” cornerstone of my own kids’ school experiences. Travelled all over the countryside with cricket and hockey. Some of the magic parent – beloved child times that I will always hold dear. To varying degrees, really important “social ins” and sport related employment followed for them. 

As a teacher, I have coached off and on for a very long time. Without any doubt, a significant number of kids will number school sporting trips as a lasting treasured life memory. Time and time again, sport allowed kids who didn’t feel success in other areas to be recognised and acknowledged. And I am quick to add that academic and sporting ability are not mutually exclusive. And I have loved the increasing  mainstreaming of women’s sport. 

Happy to spend forever following St George (as difficult as this can be, and they will send me to an early grave), watch every ball of a good test match - time permitting, dream of going to Ellis Park, Old Trafford, Anfield and Augusta…. 

So, it’s all good? 

Then why do I hesitate? 

My pastoral work has seen me talk with a heap of kids who feel isolated, or less than they should, because of a lack of sporting prowess. I have seen kids with sporting ability swagger through the playground like they owned the joint, with every air of entitlement. I have seen sporting parents behave very badly. I have seen toxic footy-head ugly male stuff. I have seen kids refuse PE largely due to body image anxiety. I read and despair at some of the poor, criminal, behaviour of a probably very small number of elite sportsmen (and they usually are men). And I read about concussions and lives in disarray after sporting careers finish. Foot, knee and shoulder all give me discomfort as I have aged (as have fielding at fine leg skin cancers). 

Can you see my problem? Then throw in worries about too much inactivity/screen time/lack of social interaction/junk food/lack of resilience…. 

As usual, I don’t have all the answers. I am happy, however, on balance, to sing from the “In Praise of Sport” hymn book, but you take yourself wherever you go – perspective, fairness, justice, humility, gratitude must be as integral to sport as they are to all facets of life. The negatives, mostly, are society’s, not just sports’. 

And, of course, sport can be part of the solution. But it can’t be the sole prerequisite for a happy, well adjusted Australian kid either.  

We should be grateful to have such a first world problem.