I’m in my late 20’s and this is my first year since 2018 that I have not done adult recreational sports (softball and flag football) in the spring and summer. The reason for not doing them this year is because my wife and I had our first child and I did not have time to play like I usually do between work and the new child. I thought I would miss playing sports, but I really don’t.
I loved sports as a kid, but playing adult sports the last few years really wore me down. I was always the captain and even the event organizer for one sport and I really liked it at first, but as the years went on I noticed it was tougher to really enjoy it. Getting people to come out each week was the biggest problem. Even people I knew personally would get super flaky and cancel hours before the game kicked off, often leaving us shorthanded. Then other teams were also a challenge. I lost my super competitive streak years ago so I really just want to have fun and get some exercise, but some people seem to be unable to accept anything short of a win and appear willing to do anything possible to improve their odds of a win including cheating or being abusive. This constant bickering of reminding opponents of the rules, only to then be accused of being rule police became very frustrating. Often I felt like my team would be very flexible to avoid conflict and it still didn’t guarantee a smooth experience at all and there would still be unsportsmanlike conduct from the others. Our team wasn’t always perfect either, but it was almost always the result of reacting to unfair treatment. We even had one team who mocked our female pitcher and made sexist comments. We complained to the league and the team was thrown out of the league immediately, but our pitcher was shaken heavily by the experience.
I have been heavily contemplating if I want to go back to adult rec sports, and I really struggle to justify it. I’ve been so much more at peace not playing and I find I enjoy more going to professional sports and just watching casually rather than playing myself. Adult sports just feel so different compared to playing when I was a kid where it was about having fun and making friends. Now it just feels like people are only interested in winning and dominating their opponent even if it’s a meaningless game. Why do people do this? Should I just quit forever or should I give it another chance?
Organized sports with formal teams and team jerseys and calendars and refs was fun in my 20’s, but I was mainly doing pickup games by my 30’s. Now in my 40’s, I still do some participation in semi-organized leagues for inherently less serious sports, but it’s easy to enforce a “fun first” atmosphere when people are drinking beers while waiting their turn.
That all being said, I still do really enjoy individual, non-competitive sports where you’re trying to get your own personal best: weight lifting (whether powerlifting or olympic lifting), running, swimming, biking, etc. I like putting up better numbers than before, in all of those sports, even in a non-competitive environment. Or combinations of numbers (not my fastest 5k ever, but maybe my fastest 5k in the same month that I put up these deadlift numbers, etc.).
The competitive assholes are in youth sports, too, by the way. I think the last time I saw two 40-somethings almost get in a fist fight, they were dads at their daughters’ basketball game.