I spent most of my early high school lunchtimes playing floor hockey. After class, I was almost always found in the gymnasium. My student life from 12 to 15 years old was regulated around one and the same activity: chasing a holey ball with a plastic bat. Two hours a day, four or five days a week, from September to June.
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I ate it, as they say. So much so that I devoured my sandwich in no time, in front of my locker, putting on jogging pants and a t-shirt. I rarely set foot in the cafeteria. I only faltered in floor hockey to prepare the student newspaper… or play ball hockey in the playground.
The gymnasium of my small suburban college was however, at the time, at the end of the 1980s, not very suitable for sport. The brick wall was dangerously textured with ridges and crevices. The 1960s design may have been pretty, but it was far from practical.
One afternoon, thrown head first into the brick wall by an opposing player, I had a concussion. “I see stars! I said, coming to my senses as flashes of light blurred my vision. “It’s normal, we’re here! a friend of mine replied.
With the college team, made up of this group of friends, we won the regional championship in Secondary V. But every day, gifted or not for handball, basketball or cosom, it was possible to play sports at school. When the gymnasium was busy, you could fall back on the adjoining small gym, where the walls had even more holes. Everyone was welcome, regardless of skill level.
Fiston notably chose his secondary school to play in his futsal team. When he found himself, in spite of himself, among the last cut off players from the team, in high school, he stopped playing indoor soccer. Not by choice, but because at his college, only students selected for elite teams had the opportunity to play sports at lunchtime and after class. Sports facilities, gymnasiums, were exclusively reserved for them, and there was no alternative.
Son ended up joining the futsal team a few years later, at the insistence of his friends, but he spent his early high school years not playing sports at all except for his lessons. ‘physical education. His brother played indoor soccer in high school, before leaving the team, focused on competition and results. He never played again. My nephews ended up giving up basketball because halfway through high school, their college was only making elite teams.
Fortunately, in many schools, dedicated people, including physical education teachers, are trying to make up for the lack of places in gymnasiums and on teams in order to encourage participation in various activities. Because the sports dropout is a worrying phenomenon.
That 15- or 16-year-olds cannot on their own, as they please, when they would like to, play sports in secondary school because they are not considered among the top 10 or 12 athletes of a given discipline seems absurd to me. I was thinking about it last week, reading an excellent report on the question from my colleague (and ex-futsal teammate at FC Pelouse) Catherine Handfield.
I have nothing against elite sport. I played elite sports all my youth, up to college in the school network and into junior in the civilian network. It is not the school’s role to train the sports elite to the detriment of the majority of students. For the elite, there are sport-studies programs. Secondary school should arouse a taste for sport in young people, before turning them into top athletes.
“During their secondary studies, only 13% of girls and 22% of boys achieve the level of recreational physical activity recommended during the school year, according to the Quebec Survey on the Health of Secondary School Youth (2016-2017)” , writes Catherine in her report. It is extremely worrying.
The experts she consulted are unanimous: too much importance is given to elite sport and competition in Quebec high schools. Meanwhile, how many young people are forever discouraged from sport because they have been made to feel like they are not up to it, taking a toll on their self-esteem?
We know the extent to which healthy lifestyle habits in adolescence have an impact on adulthood. And yet, the school subjects some students to a humiliation akin to being last chosen for the dodgeball team in the playground. As if sports psychology hasn’t evolved in 40 years and nothing has been learned about the causes and effects of performance anxiety.
Shouldn’t one of the objectives of the school be, in the long term, to train active citizens, who will be able to benefit all their life from the physical and psychological benefits of sport?
One of the possible solutions proposed by the team of researchers from the University of Sherbrooke (which I spoke about in this column last week) to help young people chase away the “dark thoughts” that have arisen during the pandemic is precisely to “promote the resumption of sports in a stable manner, avoiding suspending them again”.
My nieces are happier since they started playing hockey again a few weeks ago, my brother confirms to me. Myself, I see how much I missed my garage league team, after two years away from arenas.
I know too many people who don’t like sport because the idea they have of it is to suffer while sweating profusely on a piece of equipment, alone in a gym. Team sport has the advantage of being a fun activity. The game, the camaraderie, take precedence over the amount of calories burned. It is a social activity.
I found, in my Sunday night league, friends with whom I played cosom hockey in college, 35 years ago. We no longer have the same level, our passes are less precise, we are slower on our skates, less agile. Our pleasure is intact.