Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. That’s me. The journeywoman athlete who’s played more sports than you can count on your fingers and toes combined, but whose overall win-loss column reads like Anna Kournikova’s career record before she decided she sucked at tennis and would make more money and get more ass out of modeling.
Visions of failed tennis players aside, I stepped into my room last night and tripped over the softball mitt that I’d forgotten I’d left by the door, then cursed and half-fell over the abandoned bike helmet that I’d dumped on the floor when I’d torn up my room earlier that day to find new grip tape for my tennis racket.
I have a myriad of sports equipment littered all over the place. And I have this compulsive obsession with sports stuff that compels me to feed the addiction by adding to the growing collection every time something strikes my fancy.
There’s another problem, which is part of the reason why I can play many different sports but can’t consider myself proficient at any one of them: I have a short attention span and go through phases.
Oh, sports. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles and karate when I was about 8 years old. I took tae kwon do lessons until I hit green belt, then decided that it was too static and boring.
I went through a Mighty Ducks hockey phase when I was a kid. The problem was that in Singapore, ice rinks are few and far between, so that idea didn’t last long either.
I tried track in my pre-puberty days, when I was a rangy, skinny kid with zero muscle mass and little to no endurance. Even at age 10, my type-A personality asserted itself, and I decided that coming in last every time was bad for my ego.
My softball phase at age 11 was fueled by a desire to be Dottie Hinson from “A League of Their Own.” I had a mitt and a bat, and my sisters, cousins and I would play pick-up games in my grandma’s front yard. But again I was limited by geographical constraints: No-one plays softball in Southeast Asia.
So instead I played netball, a combination of ultimate frisbee and basketball: The one-step rule from ultimate applies, but it’s played on a court with two posts and nets, you can’t dribble the ball, and it’s all about quick passing.
That, I was actually good at. Netball consumed seven years of my life before I got here and realized that hey, guess what, no one’s heard of it, let alone played it.
No matter. I picked up lacrosse. Which I wanted to believe I was somewhat good at, but have since realized otherwise. It was fun for a while, but now my lacrosse sticks sit in a corner of my room gathering dust.
Now that I’m earning a meager salary for my daily toils at the campus newspaper, that money goes toward feeding my sports addiction with bigger, better toys than ever before.
I read Robert Kurson’s “Shadow Divers” two summers ago and decided that I wanted to learn to scuba dive so that I could go explore wrecks. Hence I took scuba lessons, bought my boots, fins, goggles and snorkel, got my PADI certification, then decided that having to rent oxygen tanks and a wetsuit and drive to find bodies of water was just too much of a hassle.
I found basketball fun last winter (even though I huck it like a watermelon), was fascinated by soccer this fall (even though I have two left feet), and have since decided that I want to start road biking. A bike I ordered off the Internet is en route from Florida to Eugene as we speak.
My room is a veritable museum of my numerous quick-fix sports obsessions. The only constant that’s stood the test of time is tennis. I’ve played since I was 10, and I’m still playing, and learning, 11 years later. It’s frustrating sometimes, like last night when I lost 8-1 to someone whom I knew for a fact had an inferior serve and an inexistent forehand. But that’s the one sport I turn to in between phases, when I’m antsy, raring to go, and waiting for my next phase to creep up on me.
The bottom line: I’m a sports junkie, through-and-through. But I’m the kind that likes to play sports.
After all, I can’t sit still long enough to watch them unfold on TV.
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