By A.J. Calabrese and Zack Goldman

We have never been great at sports. Decent perhaps, at one point in our Little League lives, but never once did we consider taking our tee-ball skills and proudly putting them on our applications to Harvard-Westlake.

 In fact, Zack didn’t even make it out of tee-ball. Moreover, he joined three weeks late and, as a result, had to wear a stark purple alternate jersey while the rest of his stickball comrades donned the normal black Colorado Rockies threads. Needless to say, it was a painful start to his sporting life. After that season, he was never to hit a baseball again, let alone off a plastic tee.

Likewise, A.J. eventually abandoned his AYSO years after realizing he wouldn’t goalkeep for the Italian national soccer team.

We gave up playing sports for very good reasons: the same reasons kids give up piano, ballet or model rocketeering. We realized we’d be better at or have more fun pursuing other endeavors. Most recently, both of us quit JV water polo and soccer. So why is it that the Athletic Department seems to be so ashamed of us P.E. students?  P.E. is not a powder-puff excuse for an actual athletic pursuit.  Nonetheless, our course description would read: Orchestra, theater and science geeks stand awkwardly against the wall while balls are hurled at them from across the court. Our course curriculum for the entire second trimester of intramurals: dodgeball, dodgeball, sign in and leave, dodgeball.

And, it was fun. We all grew to adore our coach. That is, until we had the substitute teacher — one of the athletic department’s ruling elites. After forcing us to wait aimlessly in Taper for 15 minutes, he marked absent the majority of our class who left after assuming we didn’t have class that day, leaving many of them up on the cut list and in danger of detention. Then, he got down to business. The name of the game would be dodgeball, only instead of a full court game, each side would be throwing crusty old volleyballs at each other an area less than the size of a small classroom. One sophomore girl got pegged in the face. The losers were forced to run.  After being met with opposition by protesting nerds, he retorted, “Well, if you don’t like it, you should play a sport then.”

For a department as elitist and as adamant for perfection as the athletic department, they sure try their hardest to market to un-athletic kids. Apparently they’ve resorted to scare tactics. The substitute teacher sure did. He believes that punishing us by forcing us to run suicides, a drill that he seems to believe will transform our third period class filled with slightly out-of-shape adolescents into sprightly and fleet greyhounds, is the appropriate course of action to scare us back into sports. But if Renaldo Woolridge ’08 decided to drop Cinema Studies, would Ted Walch come after him, strap him to a chair, tape his eyes open and force him to watch “A Clockwork Orange” against his will?

So to those who are gravely mistaken, the problem is not that there is a lack of interest in Wolverine athletics. Rather, it is simply that some of us were not blessed with enough God-given talent to, say, for instance, score a touchdown in the Rose Bowl. Only some of us are so lucky.