Jocks: Part Two

   In the previous post, I began to describe to you how I was initiated into the world of jocks. I purposely attempted to keep the tone light and hopefully somewhat amusing. The longer I wrote, however, the more there seemed to be to write about and I realized that not much about it was light and amusing. So I saved it for today.
   If you have spent any appreciable amount of time being around jocks for whatever reason then you've probably seen something ugly. This has probably happened on a team you've played for, on another team you played against, as a spectator or perhaps as a friend or relative of someone on a team somewhere.
   The ugly thing you saw was an athlete or possibly even a fan who simply forgot who, what or where they were and acted reprehensibly. They shouted an insult, they made an obscene gesture, they physically assaulted someone. Subconsciously, they reasoned that their mere presence at a sporting event gave them licence to act in a manner that, if it had occurred almost anywhere else in public, would have gotten them totally ostracized, fired or thrown in jail. If you have been lucky enough to have avoided any of this personally then it is still more than likely that you've seen an example of it on t.v., in the newspapers, or on the internet.

   I have spent about fifty years being involved in sports one way or another, as a parent, as a viewer or as an active participant. It is clearly the jock mentality occasionally rearing its ugly head that is my least favourite aspect of having been involved for so long.
   It is probably unnecessary to spend a lot of time here analyzing why the jock/violence mentality exists. It is a very multi-faceted issue involving, I believe, psychology, sociology, economics, and even sexuality. Regardless of the reasons for their existence, it still bugs me that I run into these knobs or am assailed in other ways by their mindless antics.
   In the blog previous to this, I talked about my trials and tribulations with the jocks at Oakridge, my high school. In a blog I posted back in early May, entitled "Bullies", I described an experience I had as a hockey parent many years ago. I had been with my sons in a dressing room after a game and one of the mothers was frantically trying not to be the last parent left in the dressing room. The reason for her fear was that her estranged and physically abusive husband was in the arena and she was terrified at the prospect of possibly ending up being alone with him at some point. What I didn't mention was that the abusive husband had also been on the Oakridge high school hockey team during my tenure there. He wasn't someone I knew personally but, at the same time, it was disturbing to think that a high school contemporary of mine had gone on to this kind of a relationship with the mother of his children. It was also hard to disassociate this man from the sports environment, the only environment in which I was familiar with him.
   Obviously, sports is not the reason why people abuse. Just as often, I suspect, sports plays a role in stopping abuse. It`s just that I have personally seen some of the nicest, most mild-mannered people go all gonzo once you get them into a sports setting.
   I play a lot of ball hockey. We pay to play, there are no salaries involved, and there is no fame resting on the results of games. And yet there is still belligerence and ugliness. There are players out there who will berate you for every little mistake. There are also players who have invested way too much of their manhood into the outcomes of even small little battles, let alone the outcomes of games or seasons. I was involved in a game once and one of our players and one of their players got into a minor altercation in the corner. The rest of the play headed towards the other end but these two guys walked back, jawing at each other. In a classic prelude to a hockey fight, one guy`s glove "facewashes" the other guy and this is reciprocated. Before you know it, fists are flying. Their guy is about three inches taller and forty pounds (all muscle) heavier and the fight is over very quickly, with their guy on the floor on top of our guy. At this point, the ref jumps in and basically grabs their guy. While being grabbed by the ref, their guy still manages to haul our guy up of the floor and then starts kneeing him in the head! To our league's credit, their guy was suspended for about a year and a half for this. This is better than time in jail, which is really what should have happened.
   I tell my wife, Doralyn, about stuff like this and she then needs me to explain it to her. She wants to know why it happens. It is hard to come up with a plausible explanation. As close as I can come is that I think sports is sometimes an arena wherein you can revisit your lost hopes and dreams. In an effort to live up to those lost hopes and dreams some over-compensation occurs. If, as growing up, you never won a game,  you never were able to play your best or make it to the big leagues, then making a mark for yourself in a municipal hockey league or recreational baseball or some other amateur sporting endeavour is really all you have left. Unfortunately, sometimes the easiest way to do this is by picking a fight, shouting out a slur or putting your fist through a window.

   I occasionally wonder what happened to the other jocks at high school. I do know that they are not all still alive. I also know that the vast majority of them probably ended up with decent jobs, raised great families, and suffered their own triumphs and the usual amount of tragedies. If somehow or other they provided roadblocks to me or anyone else over forty years ago I'm pretty sure they were unaware of it. I'm also pretty sure they had their own insecurities, high school is like that. It is sometimes difficult, however, not to lump all of them in together. I myself played on a handful of sports teams, perhaps someone out there thinks I'm a jock, perhaps I impacted some one's life in a way I'll never know about or understand. In the previous blog I talked about having a crush on the same cheerleader who was the girlfriend of the captain of the football team. Well, maybe that cheerleader liked me...