The joy of sports

For someone who doesn't like sports, I actually really like sports.

Wait, what?

Seriously. I don't follow any sports. I say I like the Mets and the Knicks, but that's mostly because I grew up with a brother who does. I haven't paid much attention to baseball since high school, and I haven't REALLY cared about the Knicks since 1996. I don't care enough about football to even pretend I have a preference for one team over another.

That being said, I love playing sports. LOVE IT. Unfortunately for me, my sport of choice as a child was gymnastics, which means that while I can still do a perfect cartwheel, I never really learned how to play basketball, baseball or soccer, all of which are more common for someone to play as an adult than, you know, walking across a balance beam.

I thankfully picked up volleyball in high school, and this has been my one saving grace of sports because that actually IS something you find yourself doing casually, at least on occasion.

The reason I love volleyball, and why I imagine I would love soccer or basketball or whatever other sport if I played any of those, is that allows me to have a shared understanding with someone without even knowing them.

The volleyball community in New York City is surprisingly small, I've learned. Over the years I've played for a number of different leagues, as well as at the YMCA. Almost every time I play at the Y, someone shows up wearing a t-shirt from one of the leagues I've played in. A few times, someone I've played with in a league has shown up at the Y.

Volleyball players know volleyball players, and every so often I'm asked to step in and help a team that needs an extra player or 2 on a given night. A few of these times, I've gone to courts around the city to meet up with a team where I don't even know anyone, because the person who referred me was one of the players who couldn't make it that day. And while I'm not normally super comfortable with strangers, I'm so much better meeting someone on the court than, say, at a party. There's a shared language that comes with any sport, and once we start passing the ball around, discussing who plays what position and what kind of rotation to use, it stops feeling like a struggle to find common ground with new people and starts feeling like home.

It's amazing, when you think about it. How sports allows you to bond with people over a shared set of rules that temporarily governs your actions. I love it.

And in other sports news, I won my March Madness pool!! BOOYAH. $90, all for me.

And in other unrelated news, I am baaaaaaack at Stratejoy today. Read about how I got to write my own job description and then found out it wasn't actually for a real job at all.