I’m right there with you. Gym class from grade 7 onwards absolutely destroyed any appreciation I might have for organized sports. All I learned is that organized sports were about creating an institutionally-approved arena for bigger kids to lord their physical advantage over smaller ones; I wish it were more complicated than that, but it really wasn’t.

I say that it destroyed my appreciation for organized sports — heavy emphasis on the “organized”. It’s the involvement of any institution, ranging from the school system to the advertising/marketing morass of pro sports, that seems (in my view) to turn sports from a “fun way to get some exercise with friends” into a “toxic shitshow of rewarding people for physical advantages over others”.

*Disorganized* sports — ie a group of friends showing up at a park to play baseball — seems to avoid this sepsis of the human soul