When I was a kid, watching the first Summer Olympics I can remember, I set up a couch cushion barrier in our playroom and put myself in an imaginary competition. In my mind, I won that competition, but in reality I knocked over more cushions than I cleared. It was fun, though.
I played basketball, and had a couple of seminal moments that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
One was in 6th grade, when we were playing a full-court game outside on concrete in PE class. It was rough, a lot of pushing and shoving, and that confused me. Sports - and especially basketball - was about finesse. My god, I loved just standing there throwing 3-pointers. But I am the only girl in an extended family, some of whom were not very nice, so I knew how to deal with the roughness.
At one point, I was under the basket with the ball in my hand and a girl bigger than me - a rarity at that age - shoved me to the ground and took the ball. It turned out I had multiple abrasions from the concrete. But I didn’t know that at the time. As I heard my classmates gasp in horror, and looked up to see the other nine players arrive on the other side of the court, I got up, ran as hard as I could and blocked the layup of the girl who had just knocked me down.
In 6th grade I wasn’t in the habit of saying “fuck you.” But I was in the habit of doing those kinds things a lot. That block remains one of the most satisfying moments of my life.
A few days later, I found out that game was a tryout for the school basketball team. I don’t remember anybody mentioning that before we started playing. Even more surprising is that I didn’t make the team.
I blamed myself. I tried my hardest but I wasn’t good enough. Damn.
Then one of my classmates, who was part of one of the local Native American tribes in Las Vegas, pointed out to me that all of the girls who did make the team were white, and went to the coach’s church.
I am white, and went to synagogue. This is the first time I remember realizing I was an outsider. And that I was not alone in that designation. In fact, my Paiute friend and I played basketball a lot during recess. She didn’t even get chosen to play the day before.
In 7th grade I actually went to the scheduled after-school tryouts. The coach was my art teacher, who was post-hippie easy going, with wild red-brown hair and a beard to match. What I remember about the tryout was that I was taller than the other girls and I was therefore able to control the ball under the basket. Just by holding my hands in the air. I also remember that I sweated a lot. And that embarrassed me. Most of all, I remember that the coach had us do wind sprints and I could barely keep up. I was a hyperactive kid! I took Ritalin so I would not run so much. And I still ran all over the place. But I couldn’t hack this. I came home and told my mom I wasn’t in good enough shape, and didn’t go to day two of the tryouts.
When I went to my art class Monday morning, my teacher called me out. “Why didn’t you come back?” he asked, with more irritation than I had thought him capable of. “You were the best player out there.”
I thought I sucked, but I was the best player out there. Story of my fuckin’ life.
My favorite poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Stay with me here. I know this is a story about sports, and Prufrock is a story about belonging, or not, or trying to belong, and fearing the ridicule when you eat a peach - or sweat - and the juices run down your face.
This is, of course, the most competitive sport in the world. There is no league, no official tournament, no clear scoring system. But it is a game we all play.
I hate this game. I have always hated this game.
But I was a fan of organized sports, because in my family you really couldn’t be anything else.
My mother was the most competitive person I knew. She once wiped my ass so badly at Scrabble, I accused her of child abuse. And I was an adult.
She would yell at the TV, berate the refs, express disgust at Dick Vitale. She was hands down the loudest person at every UNLV basketball game for three decades. But outside of those one-on-one word-game battles she took to later in life, she never put herself in the competition. She was too afraid. Of losing or winning, I don’t know. My mother was an incredibly smart, capable woman who grew up in the 1950s and internalized that women should be quiet and supportive. I watched her all my life struggle with the suppression of her own strength and intelligence.
Even though she didn’t know it, she was struggling not to be Prufrock, not to stick out in her world. To belong.
The men in my family were competitive in a different way. It was zero-sum for them. Trash talking and put-downs and ridicule from my uncle and cousin, a nicer version of that from my dad. When I was 12, I chose the World Series team opposite of the one my dad chose, that my mom chose. When his team scored or my team erred, he needled me. When my team scored, I mimicked his behavior back to him. My team lost. Afterwards he told me he was proud of me. I didn’t back down. I stayed loyal to my team.
I had no idea I was under such scrutiny, that we were, in fact, competing as we were watching the games. This compliment simultaneously made me proud and bothered me. Though I couldn’t put my finger on why at that moment.
My dad and I live together since my mom died a couple of years ago, and watching the Winter Olympics over the last two weeks, he would come out of his side of the house and say, “Did we win any more medals?” I’d be like, “I have no idea.” I didn’t keep track of the medals. I kept track of the beauty and terror of the competition.
I was struck in this Olympics how much sports have become about risking your life. It’s not just going down a mountain on skis - something I was inspired to do by watching my first Winter Olympics. It’s about sliding straight down and then straight up a ramp, and doing four turns in the air while flipping over and touching your skis, then landing and immediately heading up another ramp and doing five turns 100 feet in the air and tying your shoes and eating lunch - all with grace and style. This is not something ordinary people can mimic. No wonder there was an entire Olympic channel devoted to curling. In our post-pandemic world, there are many of us who prefer the mundanity of a smooth glide down the ice.
But there was something else at play for me over these last two weeks of Olympic and Super Bowl competition. I’ve been pulling away from sports.
It started, I think, when I did a couple of stories on CTE - the degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive concussions that has been falling former NFL players. When the stories first came out, the symptoms reported included dementia and violence. Families would say their husband/dad turned into another person over a period of time. Only upon their deaths did autopsies reveal brain deterioration.
But these were old guys, well middle-aged guys, long retired from the sport.
Then came Aaron Hernandez. The New England Patriot tight end was convicted of killing a friend of his, and hung himself in prison. He was 27. He came from a physically abusive household and had been playing high-level, hard-charging football for almost all of his life. The autopsy showed a shocking amount of brain deterioration. More than most researchers had seen before.
Such is the power of the NFL in our lives, though, that even with a prevalence of violent behavior reported in people who are - only after death - discovered to have brain deterioration caused by CTE, scientists are loath to even speculate that CTE causes violent behavior. The science, of course, isn’t there. We don’t even know how to diagnose the disease until the person has died and we can cut up the brain.
But the reported pre-death symptoms and the autopsy results correlate, and the stories keep piling up. Dementia and violence. And suicide.
Last year, former NFL player Phillip Adams murdered six people and then killed himself. An autopsy - requested by his family - found severe CTE in his frontal lobes, which regulates behavior.
As I’ve heard about these stories over the years, I can’t help but remember discussions I’ve been part of with people who are like, “Well, ole Chuck has had his bell rung one too many times.” Invariably, people would say this as Chuck was being put into a squad car for some public violence. Inevitably, Chuck’s family were much more familiar with his private violence.
There is suspicion that Lou Gehrig didn’t die of ALS, but instead from CTE. Gehrig boxed and played football, as well as baseball. He was known as the Iron Man - who could take a licking and never miss a game.
How much of our lives, I started to think, have been ruled by our love of competitive toughness. How many lives have been ruined by people with “addled brains” who took a licking? In the name of winning?
As these stories piled up over the last few years, I found myself wincing while watching football. The beauty of the sport - and my can it be a beautiful sport - started to fade as all I could see were brain injuries in the making.
The last time I remember being all-in for sports was October 2016, when my beloved Cubs finally - finally - won a World Series. It was, for me, a triumph of patience and loyalty. And superstition.
A month later, a man who had no regard for the rules of any game - organized or life - was elected to the presidency of the United States on the rhetoric of winning at all costs, of the ends justifying the means. There was a ready language for him in sports. There was a ready metaphor in toughness and violence.
We are a nation of perceived winners and losers - whether it be in organized competition or Prufrock parties. Everything is a competition. Even education. Even healthcare. We’ve lost our sense of beauty, of the elegance of a long, hail-Mary pass, of a fingertip catch, of the fluidity of skiing down a hill. Of listening. Of working together.
One of the things I kept noticing in these Olympics was the end of cross-country ski races. The winners would stop pumping with their poles a few feet before the finish line. Even with someone just behind them. My thought - as a 21st century American - was “don’t they care about their time, of breaking a record? Why are they giving up before the finish? What if the guy behind them didn’t stop pumping and it was a photo finish?”
In the end, this comforted me. I didn’t care who won. I cared how they won. Or what grace they showed when they didn’t win. I don’t feel the need to set up a curling rink in my backyard - I’m not sure how I would do that in Vegas anyway - but I do want to emulate the open and constant communication between curling teammates.
I am still unsure about my relationship to sports, though I am very sure how much I hate competition. My value… the value of the people I love… the people I call friends… is not tied to some sort of arbitrary score earned in a made-up game.
There is still a lot we can take from sports. Perseverance. Hard work. Grace. Teamwork. Communication. We think sports teach us sportsmanship. But they don’t. Or we don’t want to learn that. I’d like to live in a world where we did.
Excellent piece! I love sports, it’s something my family did together growing up and therefore it brings lots of nostalgia. But it has also made me very competitive but I think I’m a good way!
Love this piece, Carrie! I always appreciate your honest, heartfelt, family and friend involved storytelling❤️Sometimes sports are so difficult to watch and I have my own inner struggle with the love of watching the game and supporting my team vs. the potential injury and consequences that can occur during said game. The CTE is frightening :( I also found myself watching the Olympics this time around simply for the beauty and not the medal count. Some of those extreme sports are, CRAZY, yet admirable for the sheer skills the athletes possess! These last two Olympics (summer and winter) were surely the most sad I’ve ever witnessed, especially when it comes to basic human decency and nurturing; as well as mental health… so very hard to watch.