Sports, by Betsy

As a child I was not involved in any organized sports.  No soccer leagues, no softball for girls, mostly just playtime and as an older child “hanging out.”

We did play sports in school.  I remember kick ball--just like baseball only you kick a soccer-sized rubber ball--then run around the bases. I loved that game.  Also dodge ball was big in elementary grades. 

When I was about ten my father took me out on skis a few times. Not to a ski area, rather cross country.  Being in the lumber business he knew where the old abandoned roads were and I was proud of myself indeed to be out on skis with my Daddy.  For a few years the family would venture up to Old Forge in the Adirondack Mountains, stay in a hotel and ski at the ski area. In those days in NY State a rope tow was the best means of propulsion to the top of the ridge.

I loved skiing, except for getting cold.  Today 70 years later I am still skiing and have no intention of giving it up any time soon.

Also in the winter we had many opportunities for ice skating. We would skate on the nearby lake, in fact, I could skate to school at the other end of the lake.  In New Jersey our lake froze over quite often as I remember. 

On a couple of occasions as a child my Daddy took me to the local horse stables where we could rent a couple of horses and off we would go. Just walking an old nag, I’m sure.  But again, I was on top of the world because I was with my Daddy. That was probably the best sports experience of those early days and we probably only went out on horses a couple of times. I was devastated when I had to quit that because I was allergic to horses.

My mother was not athletic and did not like sports except bowling which she participated in weekly for many years.  I do believe it was more of a social activity for her than a competition. However, she always went along on the ski trips and was a good sport about it.

Around age 15 my Daddy taught me to play golf.  He was a avid golfer and quite skilled at the game. In the ensuing year I came to take it quite seriously, playing for fun and in occasional competitive events in high school and college.

As I am writing this, I keep thinking of more and more sports which were introduced to me by my father. He really had been quite an athlete himself in college. I know that because at home in the attic I happened upon some of the medals and certificates awarded to him.

I am also reminded of sporting events my father took me to watch. What I remember best are the hot dogs at Ebbets Field or maybe it was Yankee Stadium.  The game I thought boring to watch, but I enjoyed the yummy hot dogs slathered in mayo, mustard, and pickles.

Also memorable was the time we went to see Babe Didrikson Zaharias* play golf in an LPGA [Ladies Professional Golf Association] tournament in New Orleans. Babe was the greatest woman athlete of her day.  Having competed in the Olympic games in track, she was now a golf champion. I must have been around 16 or 17 at the time of that event since we lived near New Orleans. I will never forget approaching her when she was practicing on the putting green before a match.  She signed my program for me and my heart went thumpity-thump.

Another sport my father taught me was ping pong. We had an enclosed sun porch at the back of our house in New Jersey which housed our ping pong table. Daddy would challenge me to a game and start out by announcing that he would even the playing field, so to speak, by tying his right arm behind him, or spotting me a number of points. As I grew older and more adept, the number of points he spotted me diminished until finally we were even. He could not have been happier, which was a message to me about what is really important in sports.

When I was in high school we were forced to move from New Jersey, a rather progressive place, to Louisiana, the ultimate in conservatism and tradition. We, of course, had to give up the winter sports. After the move in  school my sports participation came to a rather screeching halt. Girls did not do sports in my Louisiana high school.  It might cause a girl to sweat, which is not lady-like.The best I could do was to be a cheer leader and cheer on the boys.

It was then that my father taught me to play golf. It was my saving grace when it comes to sports participation during those three years in Louisiana.

My choice to leave the deep south and go back north to college was probably driven somewhat by my love of sports and particularly winter sports.

When I married and became the mother of three children, I gave up golf and took up tennis.  I found that I could from time to time manage an hour of tennis, but never could I find a half a day for a round of golf. Also money was tight. Public tennis courts are free, not so with the golf course, even public ones.  Also during my years of mothering I coached my girls’ recreational soccer league teams.  When that was over and I was age 40 something I started playing the game until I turned 60. 

I continued playing tennis for the rest of my life, my Patty Berg signature golf clubs gathering dust in the attic. I have been tempted but have not found time to get back into golf.  I’m spending too much time and having too much fun on the tennis court.

The sports introduced to me by my father have been very important to me throughout my life and continue to be so. They have opened up doors, brought me closer to friends and family simply by being able to play together. Teaching and participating in sports with each of my three children I know has brought us closer together over the years.

Some of my best friendships have grown out of my interest and participation in sports.  I play regularly with good friends at the Denver Tennis Club, tennis and ping pong. I’m happy to say that my lovely Gillian has joined me in ping pong.  She is a formidable player and we have our own table at home.

I still play ping pong, ski cross-country and downhill. I have taught skiing to the disabled for 16 years at the National Sports Center for Disabled, which has been an educational experience, and enlightening.

Did I mention cycling? Like most kids I had a bicycle back in New Jersey as a youngster.  I rode it to school and rode around the area with my friends.  We pedaled our bikes to the movies on Saturdays and to the drug store for sodas.

I took up serious cycling when I retired in 1998.  My ambition upon retirement had been to hike the Colorado Trail.  I had worked as a volunteer building the trail now I wanted to hike the entire length. When the time came, I had to give up the idea because of a chronic back condition. So instead I took up cycling and have had some of the best adventures of my life as a result--the ultimate being the trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic which I pedaled in 2005. 

I am fortunate that I have an aptitude and a proclivity for sports--most sports, and have had the opportunity to learn to play, to practice, and the health to participate in them which is truly the love of my life--well, one of them anyway.

*Babe Didrikson Zaharias

© 13 Nov 2014 

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

Fault, by Betsy

I first encountered the word fault meaning a gap or rift in the earth’s crust--not in school or even at home under the tutelage of my parents--but when I was around the age of 50 years partnered with my current spouse and traveling in a geologist’s paradise, the state of Utah. I always thought I had had at least an average education and I did graduate from college. Yet I knew next to nothing about geology. Now whose fault is that?

I have no memory of geology being offered as a subject in high school and not even in college. Granted I attended a liberal arts college for women, and I guess geology was not considered to be of any interest to a 1950’s female student. It’s not that science courses were not offered. Biology101 was a required subject for freshmen. Plenty of courses were offered in chemistry, physics, and other sciences. But no geology or Earth science.

Part of the fault lies in the fact that it was not until the 1940‘s and 50‘s that geologists began to develop a new way of looking at the planet and how it works. Much that we now know about the history of our Earth has been very recently discovered. One of the few positive outcomes of the Second World War was that new technology used for searching for submarines could be developed and further used to study the ocean floor.

As a result scientists could now better understand the dynamics of the earth’s crust. Although the theory of continental drift had been around for decades, now there was an explanation for the movement of the Earth’s land masses which millions of years ago had been one large land mass called Pangea.

This theory of plate tectonics was in the development stage when I was in school. Makes me feel really old. The theory was still in its infancy and not completely developed and certainly not well established among geologists. No wonder it was not well known or understood among educators in 1950.

It seems that today the study of geology has become quite common. Most of my knowledge of the subject that I have now I have learned from my spouse in the last 20 years. Unlike myself, she studied geology in high school and college--and 10 years after I did. I have also gleaned a lot of knowledge from educational television programs about such topics as How the Earth was born, the early history of our planet, volcanoes, and global climate changes, and mass extinctions brought about by catastrophic geologic events. I find geology a fascinating subject, and I love learning new things. Geology does seem to be an excellent topic for educational TV, as the events which have made our earth what it is today are truly dramatic and lend themselves very well to television drama. No wonder. It is the fault of the earth’s faults that causes dramatic events such as tsunamis, earth quakes, volcanic eruptions--big, dramatic happenings.

Enough about the geologic fault. Another kind of fault with which I am quite familiar is the one that happens in tennis when the serve does not clear the net and drop inside the service box. In my ability and age level of tennis, the fault should be a rare happening. What a double fault amounts to is a gift for your opponents. It is a rare happening except when I am playing mixed doubles. In ladies’ senior doubles tennis, in my opinion, the serve is simply the first shot of the game and a way to put the ball in play. The point is rarely won on the serve.

I used to play some mixed doubles. I gave it up when I stopped playing on weekends and when I decided I did not want to routinely lose the game because of my partner serving double faults every time. Why is it that men serve faults so often and women hardly ever? I think it’s because men try to serve aces and women don’t. It’s very hard to serve an ace and it does not happen very often in my age group and ability level. An ace requires a great deal of spin and pace on the ball and perfect placement.

Neither I nor my team mates or our opponents are usually able to pull off such a serve. Better (and more fun) to place it well and play out the point. If I serve a fault, it’s no one’s fault but my own. And everyone knows it.

© 20 April 2015

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

Sports, by Gillian

In my youth, I understood sports to be for fun, fitness, and friendly competition. Now, in my curmudgeonly old age, I know sports to be about money, winning at all costs, and very unfriendly competition.

Even amateur sports have gone completely out of whack. Have you been to a school ball game lately? Even pee-wee baseball is all about winning. At that age, should it not be about having fun, getting some healthy fresh air exercise, and learning the basics of the game? Oh no! Fathers scream abuse not only at other children but at their own. God forbid that poor little Joey should strike out or fail to catch a ball. He'll pay for that when he gets home. The pressure on so many children these days is immense. Everything has become so serious.

Professional sports, of course, have paved the way. Back in the 1970s I had friends with Broncos season tickets. The husband frequently had better things to do, and my husband was rarely interested, so off to the game the girls went! It was fun. Having had the same seats for several seasons, my friend knew all the people around us. We all bought each other beers and chatted and cheered. After my divorce I lost touch with those friends, and I did not go to a live game for a long time. Then one day another friend had a spare ticket and I went to Mile High Stadium again, for the first time in probably twenty years. My, how it had changed. Everyone seemed to be angry rather than enjoying themselves. There was a constant stream of verbal abuse hurled at the players on both teams, and of course the officiating crew. I was so sick of the constant "F" word. By the time I left I felt as if it had been burned into my ears and my brain and my psyche. (Or, as Betsy commented when I read this to her, I felt completely fucked! And not in a good way!) I have not been offered a ticket to a football game since then; if I were, I seriously doubt that I would accept it.

I have to admit I still follow the NFL pretty devotedly on TV. I can't explain why I like it. Many lesbians are ardent football fans, which seems strange as the game consists of what most of us abhor; sanctioned violence, perpetrated by huge sweaty men. I have to close my mind to two things, though. The violence to women committed by an unfortunately large number of players, and the huge salaries now offered to these people, would put me off the entire sport if I thought about them too much, so mostly I don't.  After all, I don't refuse to see a movie because of the shenanigans of those acting in it.

I do abhor the lack of humanity which seems to have taken over. If a player has an injury, the opposing team members will do their best to attack that part of his body. Has it really gotten to the stage where the intent is to do permanent bodily injury?

"Be great for the Broncos if they could take him out for the rest of the season," laughs the commentator happily.

"Well if anybody can eliminate him, Foster can. Man! He plays so angry," rejoins his co-commentator in admiration.

"He's just looking to rip someone's head off every play!"

This isn't war. It's supposed to be a game. Was it always so merciless? Maybe so and I didn't get it. After all I have never played football.

OK. Fair enough. Football is a violent game. If you don't like it don't watch it.

But it's not just football.

I have played tennis, though far from the Pro level. But, at that Pro level, how it has changed. Once considered a sport of Gentlemen and Ladies, it is now as cut-throat as any other professional sport.

"Now Farmer's injured that right ankle, Varenova will keep her going to that side, see if she can't break her down," a happy commentator reports.

"Exactly," replies another, "It's time to take advantage of that injury and finish her off. Go in for the kill right now."

So this verbiage of violence seems to have penetrated even the sport of Ladies and Gentlemen.  It is so pervasive, and I cannot believe it has a positive effect on our society.

All this, and the seriousness with which we take sports, players and spectators alike, of course has come with the advent of huge financial rewards. These in turn came with the universal obsession with sports by so many people. In the days before huge lights dominated the playing fields, games were played in the daylight hours, thus eliminating most of the potential fans who were, of necessity, at work. Even if it were broadcast live on the radio, or later the old black-and-white TV, few were available to enjoy it. Most were played at weekends, to attract more followers, but time off work was limited and people had many things to cram into a weekend.

Then came the huge brightly-lit stadium where people could gather after work and watch, or watch at home on the TV in the evening, relaxing from that hard day at the factory.  The fan base kept growing. Sports were becoming big business. Compensation for players and coaches, support staff and owners, kept rising.

Then came mass media, complete with ever-improved recording devises and exponentially increasing choices of what to watch when. No need to miss anything. Ever. Grandma turns up unexpectedly right at the kickoff or the first serve; no matter. Press the little red button and welcome Granny with open arms. In addition, the fan base for all sports is expanding horizontally, across the globe. Want to watch the Australian Open Tennis here in the U.S.? Can't even figure out what day it is in Australia, never mind what time? No worries. Look it up on the TV Guide, on the TV of course, not that little book we once bought at the grocery store, hit that little red button and go to bed. Watch it tomorrow. Sometime. Whenever.

So, given professional sport's universal, world wide appeal, I suppose the money involved is only to be expected. I'm not sure what Neil Armstrong earned by being the first human ever to walk on the moon, but I doubt it was anything like what many many sports heroes earn. But why not? The moon walk was reportedly watched by 530 million people. The 2011 Cricket World Cup between India and Pakistan was supposedly watched by about one billion.

I miss the days with less hype, less money, less drama, involved in sports. But what I really really miss is the gentler language, before it all became so infused with violence. But it seems to be what most people want. After all, you get what you pay for.

© 3 Nov 2014 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.