Sports I Never Participated In Or Stopped Playing

Written By:  Andrew Eide

Today I wish to explain to you why there are several sports I either never participated in or I gave up playing and the reasons why I made those decisions.

When I was in Junior High School our Class Graduation Field Trip was to a beach South of San Francisco for a day in the ocean. My classmate decided to give surfing a try. He paddled out into the waves, turned around to catch the wave, and when the wave swamped him the surfboard whacked him in the back of the head. He suffered a nasty gash on his head, nearly drowned, and was taken to the hospital to get his head stitched up. That experience made me never want to attempt mounting a surfboard and riding waves.

I tried water skiing when I was a teen. My father took me and my best friend Steve on a two week houseboat trip on Lake Shasta in Northern California. My father rented a boat and skis and we went out to a quiet area to take our turns skiing. After numerous falls into the water it was apparent to me that this nice smooth soft water that we swim in and take showers and baths in is damn hard when you slam into when falling off the skis. It was like slamming face-first into a cement sidewalk. After that experience I never did water skiing again.

Snow skiing is another adventure I never participated in. Don’t get me wrong here. I loved playing in the snow. I would hop on a sled or inner tube and fly down the hills and often ended up flipping over or running into someone else on the hills. From 1980 to 1982 I worked at General Dynamics Corporation in New London, Connecticut. One of my fellow Quality Assurance Analysts took a ski vacation. When he returned he was on crutches and both his knees had braces on them. He looked as though he has just survived an automobile wreck. I asked him what happened and he told me snow skiing is very stressful on your knees. He said he was going downhill and was doing what you are supposed to do to control your descent and he ripped both his knees out. I figure our knees are extremely important to us so I never took up snow skiing.

I started playing regular golf when I was 16 years of age. I played until 2012 when I finally gave up the sport. There are several reasons including the high cost of playing a round of golf, the high cost of equipment, and I had back surgery in October 2004 to repair a ruptured disc in my lower back. The pressure put on your back during a golf swing was causing me problems so I gave up regular golf and took up Disc Golf instead. The Disc Golf courses are shorter and the movement you make to throw the discs is way less stressful on my back.

 

Thanks for joining me today for this explanation of what sports I never took part in, which sports I did participate in but no longer do, and what I am participating in now.