Would you rather play a sport in which you were:

• the best player on the court (not being challenged to play hard and dominating)
• play where you are on the same level as everyone else (not getting any better... but not getting any worse) or
• play on a team where you were not as good as everyone else but felt like you were getting better?

Is there any of those scenarios that you would not play in?

Personally, I've always been the one who is not quite as good at sports as everyone else so I think I'd rather want to dominate and see what that feels like!!!

I would play in all three scenarios.

Hmm, that's a hard question. Can I make up my own? I would want to choose a combination of the 1st and 3rd options. I'd want to be one of the best players, but I also like to still feel like I am being challenged and feel like I am continually getting better.

It's fun to be good, but I've always felt that I fill a certain niche on a team--that Is ort of have my specialty and all my teammates have theirs and then playing together is what makes or breaks us. I guess that's the middle option with a little more variety. Even if you feel you're playing on the same level as your teammates, there can be huge challenges to master new skills that your teammates have and to get better and better as a team.

I need to be the best when I play... I love a challenge and like a good game! I will not play in a game I dominate unless I work on something I am not good at.

You said you need to be the best when you play, but you also said you will not play if you dominate. How does that work? Sooo, is there a time when you are the best, but aren't dominating?

I don't think anyone is ever the best. Each game is different and different people do good on different nights. You can't always be the best! Unless you are playing against 3rd graders when you are 30 years old. Is that the case for you?

I need to feel like I am one of the best players on the court... I hate when I feel like I'm in the corner and no one is passing me the ball because they think I'm no good. If I'm not the best then I will play until I figure out how to be the best.

I do not have to dominate to be the best or feel like I am one of the best players... If I am too much better than the other players then I will not play. I have found that when I take it easy on someone that is when I end up getting hurt and I am too old to get hurt.

I need the competition to make it fun for me. The other person has to have a chance to win... even if it is a small chance... kind of like when we play against each other! If I win all the time there is no fun in that... 9 time out of 10 works!

Does that make sense?

Yes, I understand.

in a scenario I would love to be here play on a team where you were not as good as everyone else but felt like you were getting better because you will not be pressured when you play. well that one only depends on the players around you. but if you feel that your team is not progressive enough then its time that you pull in the trigger and do a job of a star player.

I wouldn't want to be the laughing joke of the team, but I wouldn't want to be "the best player on the court (not being challenged to play hard and dominating)" either. I agree with Tammy, that wouldn't be any different than playing with a bunch of 3rd graders.

Not being the "best player on the court" might hurt your ego, but with a determined attitude, it makes you excel beyond your wildest expectations to become one of the best players. And when you achieve that, you are then really proud of yourself and proved to yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to. Sooooooooooo funny.....

Having been in all three situations, I've liked being the best or among the top 2-3 among many. I don't like being the eventual outcast when everyone else gets tired of losing though.

Now I usually just try to play good enough so that I'm not the shmuck who is so terrible at the game that they make it no fun for everyone else playing.

I get my kicks now by going after non-obvious records. For instance I went bowling a couple of weeks ago and rather than trying to get as many pins as possible, I noticed they had a speedometer so I saw how fast I could get the ball going and still hit pins.

So how fast were you throwing the ball? Faster than everyone else?

Whilst we're on the subject of Bowling - my local alley shut down a couple of years back and was replaced with a bingo hall. It's a shame- me and a couple of mates used to go quite regularly- as i was a postman at the time, and they were both self employed, every couple of weeks we'd go down for an afternoon session and play whilst it was cheap. (It used to be unlimited games between 2pm and 7pm for about five quid).

There's another alley a few miles away in the opposite direction, but few people seem to want to go sadly, so i haven't played for ages. i wasn't very good, but i used to enjoy it!

As for the original question (though this isn't really an answer, just a collection of random observations based on my own experiences), I've never been big into sports as such. I'm absolutely awful at most ball sports, I must admit. Football (or soccer as you folks insist on calling it ) is a good example - I'm absolutely hopeless at it. I played rugby for a few years when I was at school, and wasn't half bad, but I was certainly never the best player. I don't think I ever held the team back though.

In Judo I was a late starter, and whilst there were lots of people better than me, I was always improving. I gave that up only because of a string of injuries, and the fact that it finished at 10pm. But the time I'd driven home it was closer to 11pm, and after having a shower it was getting really late. When you get up pretty early of a morning, it starts to get on top of you.

Tug of war is a good team sport (some call it the ultimate team sport...) as there is no individual glory in it. Everyone has to do their bit, and if they don't, the team will lose. That's why myself and a friend are trying to resurrect our old team - the big problems are that people often percieve Tug of War as a sport played by drunk fat blokes at village fetes, not a full on team sport (that is very well organised) and if you can get people out of that mindset and convince them to have a go, once they realise just how much hard work it is, they drop out. If you can enough people past those problems though, you can get a darn good team together!

22mph


I wasn't paying attention when I clocked myself. But later in the night after everyone'd had a few too many drinks I got the bright idea to start at the same time as the person in the lane next to me and trying to throw my ball half-way down the lane and land it in their lane to knock down all of their pins with my ball before theirs made it to the pins. I succeeded a few times. I heard a buddy of mine from elementary school say "freakin retard strength" more than once so I'm guessing the answer is yes. lol

I can't remember the last time I played a game of tug of war, except with my dog. It was probably way back in middle school! Is tug of war popular over there in England?