Orphan Sports

            
             The morning of July 31st I was feeling at loose ends because it was one of the first days of the summer that I did not have to get up for swim practice at 6 AM. No more practices, no more Saturday morning meets, and no more chlorine soaked towels. Normally this is a good feeling. I get to sleep a little later each morning, but this year was different. I was feeling ambivalent. Other years I have known that the routine would begin all over again in the spring, but no longer. This was my last year, next year I would be too old to swim in the League.
             When I came downstairs my parents handed me a copy of that days Style Section of the Washington Post. There was an article in the Kid's Post that morning, a "Sports Round-Up," brief paragraphs about various sporting events around the world that week and the author's feelings about them. One of those paragraphs was about the World Swimming Championships being held in Spain. As a swim family we had been following the World Championships pretty closely. We knew how remarkable the accomplishments of the swimmers had been. As a swimmer I could only dream, but never achieve, that level of expertise. However, the author certainly did not think very much of those.
             accomplishments. His comment was that you could walk those distances faster than the world record setting swimmer's butterfly time, what kind of comment was that? He seemed to think it a waste of time and column inches even to write about swimming.
             How rude! I have been swimming for the past nine years and I know the pressures put on swimmers at my level, the intensity of those pressures in the World Championships are immeasurably greater. And I know the feeling of disappointment when athletes can not prove to others that what they are doing is good enough, or even worthwhile. In the four years I swam on my high school team our principal never came to a meet, but he never missed a football game.