When I was in ninth grade, I was the classic nerdy outcast. I was the smallest kid in my class, I had thick Coke-bottle glasses, and I was terrified of the slightest glance from any of the school bullies. I was bookish and introverted, and spent my evenings learning computer programming and reading books instead of hanging out with friends – or, God forbid, participating in any kind of organized sport.
When I was in school, sports were for jocks. You needed to be big, strong, confident, and often a bit of a bully to excel at them. Sports, to my teenage brain, were both above and below me.
They were above me because they were an area of mystery belonging to the physically strong, that subset of boys who attracted girls and walked cockily through the hallways.
But they were also below me. In my intellectual world, I couldn’t be bothered with the roughness and dumbness of physicality. I operated on a higher plane, occupied with math and science, not to mention the time I needed to spend perseverating on the world’s injustices.
High school culture – at least where I attended, in a rural Nebraska town – was defined by castes, at the top of which was the football team. If you were in the “nerd” caste – or worse, in no caste at all – you had little chance of attaining the coolness that came with sports culture.
Sports, I believed, were not for nerds.
It took me years to realize just how wrong that assumption was. I began running in high school, and continued through college and in my twenties. I gradually learned that I was actually pretty good at it, and that a competitive athletic outlet made me feel more like myself, not less.
Now that I’m almost 50, my sport has become an even more essential part of myself. As the years have passed, the old castes and cliques of high school have melted, and juggled the pecking order.
I’ve come to see that sports are not just for bullies. They’re a way to better understand ourselves and to help us grow into better people. Training for and competing in races helps builds my own sense of confidence and strength, without sacrificing who I really am.
Of course, I’m still a nerd, and still preoccupied by math and science and philosophy. But I’m an athlete too.
Now that I watch my kids make their way through school, I hope they make friends who are kind, thoughtful, and sensitive. I also hope they’re able to adopt identities as athletes, to be able to build confidence in their bodies and to understand the value of setting physical goals and working together to achieve them. Once I was able to do that, I was able to see myself as an athlete – and a nerd – all at once.
