Worst sports memories: Bad sportsmanship on my own part

I grew up in a family where we were encouraged from a very young age to get involved in as many sports as possible. I have 2 sisters and a brother and all of us excelled at almost every sport we ever tried to get involved in. Two of us got college scholarships for a sport and one of us (not me) went on to play a sport professionally and was paid to do so.

The only sport that none of us ever was any good at was baseball for some reason. We all excelled in basically anything else we tried. Of course we all had our favorite sports to play and for me those sports were soccer and basketball.

I commanded respect on the court and field in both of these sports but it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows.

Now let's move on to something that isn't deserving of respect and these two instances are things that I think about to this day and it was where I was a terrible sport and showed zero class in the respective games. I regret those moments to this day and I cringe when I think about them.

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The first one involves a basketball game at a very young age. My sister, who is 2 years older than me was at that time the only girl that was allowed in the boys league because she was too much better than all of the other girls. One time her team was playing against my team. Despite being taller and stronger than she was she absolutely dominated me and everyone else on my team during that game. This was more than a bit humiliating and to say that I didn't take it so well was an understatement. I don't even recall how old I was but it was something like 10-12 years old.

Upon our defeat I cried and also knocked over and threw some metal folding chairs on the side of the court, right in front of the parents. I'm sure it was an embarrassing moment for my parents who eventually came over and told me to cut it out. My sister is the athlete in our family that went on to play professionally including in the WNBA so I think it is acceptable that she was able to accomplish this.

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The second example sticks out in my mind a bit more because it was a sport that I excelled at. I dominated at it from about the age of 13 onwards but that doesn't mean that I always won because a team with 5 good players is always going to win against a team with 1 stellar player and that is exactly what happened when i was around 15.

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It was very well known in the league that I was playing in that year that I was a player to be feared and if the opposing team didn't focus very heavily on me I was going to make them pay the price by scoring multiple goals on them. This particular team went in with a dirty tactic and years later I would have to admire them for this. They put a guy on me that followed me wherever I went on the field. This guy would taunt me, talk trash to me, pull on my shirt, and basically harass the hell out of me whenever the official was not looking. The referees were not the best back then and honestly, I don't think they really understood the game as well as many of the players did.

This guy that was marking me achieved his goal and I couldn't keep my cool and started to play aggressively towards not just him, but to anyone else that was nearby me. I totally lost my cool.

This next part the official was wrong in what he did but that doesn't make the way I handled it acceptable and I am definitely not trying to make an excuse for my behavior. I had just committed a foul against the guy that had been stalking me the entire game and they were justifiably awarded a free kick. Less than a minute later he committed an obvious and egregious foul against me and we were awarded a free kick. However, the ref wasn't done with us yet. Realizing that myself and this other kid were having a go at one another the entire game, he opted to red card and eject both of us from the game.

I protested stating that "how can you card me for a foul committed against me?" and his reaction was something along the lines of "you have been a problem since this game started" and of course he didn't realize that it was actually the other kid that was the problem.

Here is where it gets embarrassing for me: Because my family had such a massive focus on me playing this sport we had pretty great equipment and the game ball for this game was actually MY BALL. I ended up pulling the oldest hissy-fit move that a person can possibly do.

I'll never forget the death stare my mother was giving me when I approached the sideline and I tossed the ball back onto the field over my shoulder. Normally my mom is the center of attention at those games because her son does some amazing stuff on the field. This was not one of those days. She also refused to allow me to sit in the car and forced me to stay with my team in shame and also forced me to apologize to the referee after the game was finished as well as congratulate the other team on their victory.

I learned a lot from this game but one of the main things was shame. Even though this tactic on the part of the other team was dirty as hell and it is horrible that the coach almost certainly instructed the kid to do exactly what he did - the method was effective. This wouldn't be the last time that I would be marked in this fashion but in the future I would simply make a note to a linesman about what was happening and they would inform the head official. I had many a player red carded for these tactics in the future and one coach was actually reprimanded when his player turned on him after getting carded.... that was pretty funny.

Anyway, these moments stick with me to this day and bad sportsmanship is just terrible. I wasn't engaged in it often but I do remember these moments very vividly even though it is more than 25 years ago.