getting cut {{rant, be warned}}

When my mom yelled up the stairs this morning in a panicked voice, “Corryn just got cut, I gotta go. I don’t know when I’ll be back,” my immediate reaction was confusion. I’ll admit, for a brief moment, I thought blood, and I later realized that it was that precise thought that was the reason for my mother’s panic. (My youngest sister has always been accident prone, and things have been particularly unlucky for my family recently. A month ago she passed out at her register at work–unresponsive with no pulse for a full 3 minutes. Just a few days later my other sister sliced a piece of her finger off in the deli slicer, but I digress).

However, it was as soon as it dawned on me that Corryn was at her preseason tennis practice this morning, that confusion set in. That entire thought process occurred in less than half of a second, and I yelled back, “You mean she got cut from the tennis team?” My mother didn’t hear me, as she ran out the door, still expecting to see blood when she would arrive at the high school.

Although no blood was involved, I began to see red. First of all, I’ve never been an advocate of holding cuts for high school teams. (Although I never complained when the cut of the girl who was just-slightly-too-clumsy for cheerleading secured my spot on the varsity squad junior year, despite the fact that I was very nearly in the same boat as her the previous year). Aside from that, I’ve always thought that high school sports should be an opportunity for learning sportsmanship and teamwork, and even more fundamentally, how to play the frickin’ sport. You can’t learn any of those things if you’re told you’re not allowed to play because “Your serve is phenomenal, but your return percentage is just too low.” Yes. The coach actually said that to her.

For chrissakes, she’s fifteen fucking years old. Is she really supposed to play like Serena Williams? Honestly? Be glad she can even make the serve into the service box with any kind of consistency–I know that’s more than I could do at fifteen years old. Not to mention the fact that she has a stronger serve than over half the girls on the team, and an overall better game than the coach’s granddaughter, who just so happens to still be on the fucking team.

Yes, there should be divisions between skill levels. If my sister’s return percentage isn’t quite up to par, she can play on JV. After all, she is only a high school sophomore. When I was in high school, it was rare the day a sophomore got to play on varsity anyway.

Furthermore, it would be one thing if cuts were being made on strictly a numbers basis. As it is, the coach (who is a first-time coach, by the way) has been left with a team that is too small, after making all of her final cuts. And even if that weren’t the case; if the team were too large to let everyone play all the time, would it be so much trouble to let the weaker players at least practice and work out with the team? Help them work on their weaker points so that next year they have a better chance at not getting cut?

I won’t argue the point that we have become too overprotective of our children–shielding them from hurt and dissappointment and failure so much that when they experience it in the real world they don’t know how to react to it, deal with it, or bounce back from it. But for crying out loud, high school is NOT the real world for a reason!!!! High school should be a chance to grow and learn those very things that I listed above: sportsmanship and teammwork, among other things.

All my sister has learned now is that who you know matters more than what you know. And she’s learned that no matter how strong you are in one or more areas, someone will always pick out your weaknesses and fault you for them rather than showing you how to improve upon them. And however true those may be, what kinds of lessons are those? Those are the kinds of lessons that teach an impressionable young mind to be bitter and vindictive.

I do think that the lesson of “you can’t have everything you want,” is an important one. But I think that lesson can be taught without destroying their self-esteem and making them hateful towards you for teaching it. They’re going to need all the self-esteem they can get when they go off out into the real world. High school is not the real world, nor should it be made to pretend like it is.

The real world is a whole ‘nother ball game. No pun intended.