worst in school
I recall only one of my school reports from those many years ago. For PE, it read: "Fothermucker is a lazy and immature boy who nobody likes". Why? Well, I always saw sport as a pressure to fit in and be part of a team, so I undermined every game I could:

Cricket - 'accidentally' knocking the bales off the wicket to get out immediately.
Football - they picked me last and put me in goal. So I sat cross-legged and let them all in.
Rugby - the best way to avoid wind-chill was to lie down at the sidelines. I did.
Tennis - lobbing the ball miles into the distance so I could have a sit down while the other player walked ten minutes to get it.
Rounders - 'accidentally' throw the bat as I swung (repeat until sent back to changing rooms).
Running - walk.
Swimming - pretend to have a verruca and no rubber sock

I'm still stupid and immature. People still don't like me. But I least I never grew up to be a fucking PE teacher.
(Fothermucker, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:42, 1 reply)

10 k not so fun run.
So I decided I'd do my bit for charity and run 10k before getting hammered in a pub. Done a few k on a treadmill to get used to running again and found it no problem. I was told though by several members of staff that I should get a pair of proper shoes. But hey what the hell do gym staff know my little runners will be fine...

nope.

6k in I felt like someone was hitting the soles of my feet with sledgehammers, my socks (cheap and thick in much the same way many of my ex's were) started clumping around my toes creating blisters that Sir Hillary couldn't climb. So I was forced to stop by the nearest bin to catch what little breath I could manage.

There must be a better way i thought and in my oxygen depleted state i decided to remove my socks letting my feet breath and giving the blisters room so as not to rub and spew gunk when they burst. So dumping said socks in the bin I put my shoes back on and started running.

Oh how great did it feel, the air rushing through my piggys, the feel of the ground, the freedom to move.... the agonising pain shooting up my legs through the shins and up my spine.

Removing the socks was the worst thing i could have done. No more padding just a few mm of rubber in my sole as protection and I was surrounded by 3000 people and with me being stubborn (bulls have been heard to comment that someone in the herd is as stubborn as danniemcq) I just had to keep running for another 4k.

By the end of the 10k I had popped every blister, cut every toe, had both feet swollen and shins like bamboo.

The pints after were excellent though.

length? 10km
(Samantha Bricks Better half done a poo on, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:39, 3 replies)

I never seemed to be picked for the sports teams.
I was (and still am) quite a short arse so when playing cricket in junior school the full sized leg pads went over my waist and I was unable to bend my legs at all. After goose-stepping out onto the pitch I managed to get myself into a sort of ready stance. The bowler was the PE teacher who took this shit seriously even with 9 year olds opposing him. The run up was taken and the ball came thundering down the crease[?] and although I tried to swing for it, it whistled past me unmarked. My attempt to hit the thing unbalanced me and I managed to fall backwards over the stumps myself. As I couldn't bend my legs I floundered on my back. The roaring laughter of everyone else at my struggle to get the bloody pads off before stomping off the field still makes me flush now.
I wasn't going through that again so when it was my turn again I didn't bother with any protection at all and as soon as I took up my position I swung the bat into my own bales and off I walked before the teacher had a chance to finish his run up. I could see the disappointment in his face as I'm sure he was going bowl straight at me the utter utter shit.
(TitanLX, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:37, 2 replies)

An Olympian knocked my tooth out.
Back when I was a little kid I used to be part of a saturday morning swim group. (Read tons of kids swimming up and down lanes while the coaches looked about desperately for someone with a tinsy bit of talent.)

As you can expect with a bunch of kids messing around things can get a bit violent. A good trick was starting to swim without pushing off and kicking everyone in your vincinity. Although when 2 kids do it at the same time, one is going to lose. I lost, a tooth, to a girl.

Although I was never good enough to get on the elite swimming team I did stay a swimmer for a while, and then a lifeguard so did the girl that wounded me. So I was quite happy for her when she actually got into the Olympics. Didn;t do great but she was there. And she once knocked my tooth out.

(not a great story but is an injury related Olympics one so I posted it just for Ungersven)
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:24, 1 reply)

World record cricket shot
A few years ago I was in the Caribbean on holiday with the wife. One day I decided to join in a game of beach cricket with some locals and some other tourists.

Eventually, after lots of tedious fielding, it was my turn to bat and after a few blocks to get myself in I dropped down on my right leg and walloped a cover drive over everyone’s head and into the sea.

It was a magnificent shot!

Or so I’m told, as I didn’t see it as I had managed to dislocate my right leg at the hip and was rolling around squealing and eating sand.

The local doctor managed to pop my leg back in with minimum fuss and I was up and hobbling about in no time.

The next day I had to buy a new tennis ball for the guys on the beach as whilst during the commotion nobody retrieved the ball and it had drifted out to sea.

Which for the record, most likely means it didn’t touch the ground until it reached Ireland which is a good 4000 miles away. And that is a world record.

In your faces B3ta, I’m number one!
( Dervel OTBC, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:24, 1 reply)

I attended to a kid's futsal school for 3 long years. Everyday I got the be the last to be picked for any team (even girls were picked before me). One day I managed to score a goal (mostly because no one expected me to do it, including the opposite GK), and this was pretty much the pinacle of my futsal career. The kids kept picking me last, though.

I was taller and tougher than other kids of my age, so the logical choice would be instead to practice some kind of martial arts. So I attended to judo classes for another 3 years, and the farthest I could get was a blue belt (in Brazil, blue belt is the intermediate grade between white and yellow). I usually sparred with a girl that lived in my street, and never put much effort on it, since she was pretty and I loved the scent of her hair when she was immobilizing me on the tatame.
(Monocromatico Lady Godiva's horse, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:24, 2 replies)

Wrestling
Horrible filthy sport. At school we were required to be in one sport to graduate, and wrestling looked like the least of a lot of bad options. The coach was a gridiron football player and really couldn't care. At the one and only tournament I had no clue what to do other than avoid getting pinned. I lost my one and only match. There was only two in heavyweight class so I got a 2nd place ribbon.
The only thing I enjoyed was watching a bantam-weight doing a double eruption after drinking a dose of Epsom salts in a vain effort to lose weight.
(the other guy not the one that gave you coochie warts, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:21, Reply)

Rugby aged 11 running down right wing. Gwaine Ansell took me down
Leg fucked for whole of teenage life, years of being the school cripple and enduring taunts. Once I had finished growing they got to work fixing me but by then the bones had grown all twisted. They broke my leg in three places and pinned and plated it all back together in the right place. They also created new ligaments and tendons out of braided hamstring. Did a fine job and I now can walk without a limp, run jump and cycle over 100 miles a week. Huzzah for modern medicine. Oh and have an xray of the top part, I don't have the whole thing unfortunately. www.b3tards.com/u/98480917b02b1414508e/p7110027.jpg
( Peej, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:17, Reply)

I've always had the body of an IT professional
but I went to a slightly posh school so had to play rugby. One day the coach laughs at my feeble attempts to throw the ball, he picks me up by the shoulder and shorts and tosses me some distance across the pitch.

"that's how you throw a ball" he says

The joke was on him though, it was a forward pass though so it didn't count.
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:16, 2 replies)

My school's playing fields were alongside the Macclesfield canal..
A place more known for the number of dead things in it than watercraft on it.

It was also known that when you reached 5th year you were at least once a week allowed to choose canoing as one of the sports activities. As a sports hater this was ideal for me so I signed up with glee. When the first lesson began we peered into the gloomy boat shed and saw racks of lovely Kayaks which we were assigned to us by the PE teachers. The jewel in the crown however was a double seater which two of my larger friends decided they wanted to command together.

After initial safety advice and instructions on how to use the oars we lowered ourselves into each kayak and proceeded to weave our way up and down the small stretch of canal we were allowed to venture. After half an hour or so we were reasonably confident in our abilities and were executing turns, paddling backwards and generally having a great old time.

This was until we heard a low booming vocal sound and saw the 2-man Kayak steaming towards the rest of the group.

"Ramming speed!" was heard as the drumming sound got louder and faster as my two friends paddled as fast as their arms could propel them. It was inevitable they were going to hit someone and their drumming noises were now barely audible over the screaming of the PE instructor. They were at the point of no return.

Poor Jane got the brunt of it with the front of their Kayak hitting hers broadside. She didn't stand a chance and was immediately tipped into the murky waters. She was dragged crying and spluttering to shore and given quite specific instructions to immediately get into the showers for at least 10 minutes whilst the other teacher went for the school nurse. Possibly for antibiotics or other precautionary medicine required after ingesting canal water.

It was the most fantastic thing we'd ever witnessed but we never got to go canoing again.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:15, 3 replies)

Branding Police
This QOTW has absolutely nothing to do with


So don't even think about posting a story about them.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:14, 4 replies)

A sporting disaster off the field
A friend of mine is a teacher in an American high school. She tells a tale of their head coach, who made the fatal error of being seen by some of the students, in the adult section of the local video store, selecting a stack of videos -- all of which were cheerleader themed...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:11, 3 replies)

PE doesn't exist
You do sports at school. I don't remember a single time I was actually told the rules of a sport in PE. I'm not making any promises, but if anyone had taught me the rules of football I might have been more interested in it. I can't think of any other subject at school where you're expected to know the material already.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:08, 9 replies)

A sporting outcast.
I currently live in Australia and in the office I work in, I'm the only person who doesn't do 15 hours a week in the gym, or plays half-a-dozen team sports after work. I get slightly sympathetic looks from some, followed by a deep-seated mistrust that someone of their aquaintance hasn't validated their lifestyle choice by doing fifty reps on the pelvic floor machine or whatever.
Don't get me wrong - it's important to get into some shape other than spherical - but I feel like I'm considered strange for getting my excercise outside by walking 9 km each day to and from work.
I can sort-of see why it happens more in so in Adelaide than it did in Sydney: there's fuck-all to do in Adelaide other than play sport or drink wine.
I feel bad for our oldest. She likes science, art and maths and while she's not bad at sport, she's bored witless as it's all the schools do here. However, she's taller than nearly everyone in her year, so she's expected to be somehow magically gifted at any sport going.
The only place worse I've seen was working on a kids' sport camp in the US. Making seven year olds play hockey and football in 40+ degree heat for twelve hours a day is a bit much.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Thu 19 Apr 2012, 16:06, 4 replies)

The horror the horror…I still have flashbacks…….
During my last few years at secondary school the teachers seemed to decide to start a few new sports clubs up as a way to make it look like they were actually doing their job and getting the kids to actually partake in sports. Due to this I was assigned to take part in the basketball team and to be honest I wasn’t too bad. Sure I was not the best but I still made it into the squad and trained with them.

After a few months worth of training our teacher Mr M was pretty impressed and decided to arrange a friendly or two to see how we went. This plan failed almost instantly as we were a school in Barnsley, a place where the main sports taught at school were either football, rugby or beating up anyone that looks smarter than a root vegetable. After the umpteenth knockback from a school that had no basketball team Mr M came up with a great idea two matches against our own schools (all girl) netball team- one game of netball followed by a basketball game a week later.

The lads were rather confident in beating the girls netball team, after all netball is a softer version of basketball so we would walk it. Also the bigger lass who was known as the more mental of the team was away on holiday so only the smaller petite girls were left to play against us.

Oh dear.

In hindsight I should have realised that the girls finger nails looked a little longer than usual but at the time I was useless with regards to observations like that and thought that all women had their nails like that. They were also Barnsley women and therefore can handle themselves pretty well.

The instant we got the ball it all went wrong. Anyone who held the ball for longer than a second were pounced upon by 2 or more screeching harpies slicing away at whatever they could with their nails. The referee was the netball coach and therefore let as much as possible go their way.

I am proud to say that I managed to last most of the game, that’s mainly because we lost a few players due to off the ball incidents that ended with a swollen jaw to one guy and two cases of groinal bruising to our better players. The players left on the court looked like they had been used as a scratching post for a group of tigers.

As we were heading down to the showers to clean off the blood one of the girls skipped by and loudly said “ Can’t wait for next week, Becks is back and basketball is more of a contact sport isn’t it?”.

The basketball game was called off due to half our team not turning up the week after due to illness or forgetting their kit.

Are all girls netball teams this nasty or is it just something in the water in Barnsley?

TL;DR= Basketball team learns that netball playing women are demented
(mon bison powered by magnets, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:49, Reply)

Sports 'whites'?
Thanks mum, for washing my pure white PE kit along with something red so I had to endure a week of homophobic ribbing by my mates for wearing a pink hued T-shirt and shorts.

Thanks a LOT.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:46, 5 replies)

I hope my old PE teachers are listening but as I'm 46 now they're probably dead.
Being 5'11" and built like a brick shithouse did not mean I would be any good at goal defence in netball....ever! Took them four years of me leaping about like a demented heffalump to work that out.
( girlinthehole, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:46, Reply)

Quick pea
I was about 8 and playing football in a school games lesson.

Got the ball, ran the full length of the pitch.

He shoots!

He scores!

He turns around to see angry team mates running towards him!

Nobody told me we swapped ends at half time.
(Mork, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:41, 2 replies)

The shame.
I was once sent off during a five a side football match. I was a spectator. I deserved it.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:39, Reply)

Precision sadism
One afternoon, when I was a young teenaged knacker with 30% added fatness extra free, I was making my way across the sports fields in preparation for rugby practice and chatting to a mate as I did so. We passed the two teachers on duty for the session, one of whom was the school's Head of Rugby, a Scottish alcoholic with anger issues. Both were holding huge string bags full of rugby balls.

We kept on walking until their conversation petered out of earshot, and were about fifty metres away when I heard the deadened thud of a ball being kicked. About a second and a half later I felt the undeadened impact of a rugby ball hitting me square in the back, itself followed by the hearty laughter of the Head of Rugby. I mustered my chunky teenage dignity and did not grace his uncouth gesture by turning round. In retrospect, the man earns grudging kudos for his aim.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:27, Reply)

A load of balls
One of the very unfair things at my primary school is that, while kids were always being called to the front in assembly and given trophies for having long legs or being good at catch, there were never any awards given out just for being clever. One of these humiliation-of-the-unfit rituals was a certificate system where everyone was made to perform various pointless tasks such as running, jumping over things and throwing things, after which we would be graded purely on performance, with none of the nice awards that you're supposed to make for kids like "best effort" or "sportspersonship", nor even a reassuringly patronising segregation between boys and girls. If everyone who got below a certain grade had been been herded into the sports hall and gassed, it would have been entirely in keeping with the tone of the whole thing.

Very few of the events were actually proper sports. One of them was simply "throwing a cricket ball (as far as you can)". I probably made the great achievement of managing to throw the ball further than the end of my feet, but this story isn't about me.

A couple of kids who'd had the foresight to forget their PE kits had been given the task of measuring the distance of each throw, using a trundle wheel. For those for whom trundle wheels were not an essential part of school equipment, this is basically a wheel on a stick that you roll along the ground in front of you. The circumference of the wheel is one metre, and every time it turns it goes "click", so as you walk along you can count out the number of metres. One young lad who was particularly good at throwing things lobbed the ball a fair distance, maybe forty metres or so. At that distance, and with the grass on the school field not having been cut for a while, the ball was now completely invisible from the oche, or whatever it's called in cricket-ball-throwing. The trundle-wheel team set off, but at the wrong angle. Cue a dozen kids yelling "No, not there, over there!" and the trundlers zigzagging all over the shop, all the while dutifully counting the number of clicks, before they eventually found the ball's resting place after four or five changes of course.

Presumably there were no teachers around at the time to realise that this would have given a rather skewed result. Neither can they have really been interested enough in the results to realise that a nine-year-old child had apparently beaten a world record.
( Photoshop Bitch 2014 edition, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:20, 2 replies)

Damning with faint praise.
As a malcoordinated teenager every report card from my PE teacher at secondary school praised me for always remembering to bringing my kit.
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:17, 1 reply)

What's better than winning gold at the olympics?
Not having dedicated your entire life to the utterly fucking pointless pursuit of running very fast in a straight line for 100m
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:12, 6 replies)

I'd had two little accidents as a teenager; a car crash and an incident with some stairs.
These had left both of my shoulders rather weak; dislocations will do that to a the feeble frame of a growing child.

But my wiriness and spurts of energy were enough to get me onto the school rugby team. I have no idea what position I played, but I was in that line that ran all the way across the field, and my lithe figure was able to twist and squirm out of the grasp of the heavier teenagers, especially those whose hormones were giving them a really hard time.

But come one muddy October afternoon, the PE master announced that one of the regular boys was off sick, and someone from the back row had to come forward and make up the scrum. Which is how a pathetic 8-stone 15-year-old version of myself was wedged in the middle of a mass of sweaty, stinking teen meat, with a beefy head wedged under each armpit.

The ball was chucked in, and the frenzied lurching and kicking began as the scrum heaved this way and that, ankles stabbing at the ball.

Until someone lost their grip on the muddy field, and our side started to topple. The opponents pushed harder, feeling the scrum give, and with a mighty bellow the scrum surged and we all went over, collapsing in a heap of stripy shirts and mud-spattered knees.

People picked themselves up and grinned through gum shields as the PE master blew his whistle. But down at the bottom of the pile, half man half mud I lay there, my two arms pushed to the wrong side of my shoulder blades. As the scrum went over, I'd managed to have both of my arms dislocated simultaneously.

The sight was not unlike a badly-swatted fly, legs still ineffectively twitching as the main carapace lay crushed and broken. The sports class gathered round, silent in sympathy until the PE master gathered his wits and took charge.

"Kemp, Wilson, help him up!" he barked as the two fattest kids game forward and got me upright. "Now grab his left arm; Bourne, Hussey, take his right," and I felt my wrists clamped tightly by the sweaty, clammy hands of my colleagues, held aloft like a rugby-playing Jesus.

The PE Master stood uncomfortably close to me, and looked me in the eye. In a stern voice he told me to take a deep breath, and as I did so he lunged forward with both palms flat, throwing his entire weight against my ribcage.

I can still hear the crunching sounds, 15 years later.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 15:03, 5 replies)

Mr Glover.
I think I must have been about 15 when a new PE teacher, Mr Glover, came to our school. Completely nuts about his football he was, he’d ref our games while taking part in them too, running around in the ankle deep mud like he was bloody Bobby Charlton or something, commentating on the match out loud. I remember very clearly that if you dared try to tackle him he’d throw himself to the floor and award himself a penalty. Then I went home one day and my brother had killed my kestrel.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:52, 4 replies)

I tried rugby, once.
I would have been about eight years old, and wanted so badly to at least have the ball for a bit. That counts as participation, right?

My team were all stood in line for the kick-off. The ball was duly kicked. It was a truly beautiful kick, and it arced high into the sky. A fantastic demonstration of physics right there.

However, what goes up, must come down. Right into my face.

I didn't try rugby after that.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:52, 3 replies)

insert pun about balls, wickets, and so on here.
when much younger, i went to a posh private school. on a scholarship.
to fill in the subtext to this, i was, as you might say, a pov. i lived on a small farm in a mobile home, and my folks were BROKE.
This rankled with some of the more well-off kids, in no small amount due to the fact that i was a smart kid with a smart mouth, surrounded by people whose continued presence in the classes was more to do with their parent's bulging wallets than their ability to reliably be left alone with anything sharper than a plastic spoon, or tie their own laces without risk of strangulation.
during one particularly heated game of cricket, something i was MASSIVELY apathetic about, to my team's great dismay, i was being a rather lackadaisical batstop, and, for my sins, received a hearty yet furtive wallop in the spuds with a cricket bat. eye-watering, rolling around with no air in lungs, praying for death to take me, you fellow testicle-bearers out there know the drill.

however the next day the pain was still pretty intense. enough to make moving, walking, thinking, breathing etc vomit-inducingly painful. eventually, i was taken to the doctors, who immediately looked concerned, rang me an ambulance, and without further ado, off i went to the hospital.
turns out my right'un had done a backflip and tied his little life support line in a knot. one way blood traffic. imminent death of nut.
the worst bit wasn't the pain. it wasn't the surgery. it wasn't even the hospital food.

it was waking up bewildered and needing a piss, trying to sit up, and realising VERY FUCKING SUDDENLY that they've been bleeding during the night and your dressing is FIRMLY attached to the sheet and your junk, and you've just torn some stitches.
(UppityDamnPrimate LET'S OPEN THIS F*CKING PIT UP, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:46, Reply)

Lots of rugby stories already
Which implies either that all most of the male QOTWers are either Welsh or ex-minor public schoolboys, or both.

I'm both. Don't blame me, I didn't pay the fees
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:43, Reply)

My claim to be the worst footballer in the UK.
There were only 54 kids in my primary school. About 25 were boys, and only maybe half of these were old enough to play for the school football team. Yet somehow I managed to get dropped from the squad.
It wasn't like we had a good team either. We lost every match by at least ten goals - generally without being able to score any at all. The first time I played the match had to be stopped for me to tie my shoelaces, three times. In my second match I managed to actually get the ball at one point, but panicked and kicked it at our goal. After that I was discretely retired to make way for a slightly less terrible eight-year-old.
I was shit hot at the sack race, though.
( Zuowan, Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:36, Reply)

Our school was sporting nuts.
I played rugby and cricket which I enjoyed,
and hockey which I didn't. I'd always looked down on it as a "fcuking girl game", but it's not. It's bloody vicious.
And all gym/sport teachers are either bent, sadists or both.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Thu 19 Apr 2012, 14:34, 6 replies)