My eldest granddaughter, Hallie, ran track for Herriman High School in a meet against Riverton High on Tuesday.
It was the first race of hers I attended since she started running for the school a few months ago. When I heard she had joined the track team, I rolled my eyes.
In a direct line going back 500 years, neither side of my parental ancestry has produced a single common athlete, much less a superior one.
This is not to say that we weren’t strong, only that competitive athleticism was not in our genes. We made good farm drudges, laborers and were always handy with a shovel or pulling a plow.
The one team area of physical effort for which we were valued was front line service during medieval battles. My ancestors excelled at arrow catching, being doused with flammable substances while assaulting castles, and getting ridden down by cavalry.
Hallie, 17, is a sprinter. On Tuesday, she ran the 100- and 400-meter races. She didn’t finish first but that didn’t matter. It’s the fact that she ran at all that made me proud.
Hallie suffers from celiac disease and scoliosis. Both would give her a legitimate pass at athleticism, but she refuses to let them.
Other granddaughters participate in organized sports. Lyndie, 12, is a volleyball star, and Faith, 13, just joined an all-girl tackle football team. When they were still in high school, Bailie and Brylie actively pursued competitive cheerleading.
Conversely, my two grandsons seem better suited for what charitably could be referred to as “cerebral competitions,” but which I call “thumb sports” such as Fortnite, Dota 2 and Sit-on-Your-Butt-Craft.
It’s not their fault. I blame history. Centuries of conscripting males from a certain family line, arming them with pointy turnips, then sending them against Vikings and Saxons, is definitely going to thin out the testosterone over time.
Never mind. The point is that my granddaughters are tough. I like watching them engage in battle through sports that I was never good enough to play.
I managed one miserable season with the Park Lane Lions in sixth grade during which I was skull-drilled by a pop fly that came my way while I was reading a comic book in way-right field.
Church basketball and baseball were theoretically open to all comers, but it only takes hearing “and please don’t let Kirb touch the ball” a couple of times during opening prayer before a guy catches on that his skill isn’t required.
I almost drowned during an impromptu game of water polo — which was really just a game of keep away with some other kid’s bathing suit.
And even when highly motivated by various forms of livid authority — police, principals, teachers, the Old Man — I was never able to run as fast as Hallie ran Tuesday.
The only competitive thing I was ever any good at was shooting — specifically handguns. There’s no athleticism involved in target shooting. I even won a few trophies, the whereabouts of which are unknown today.
That’s OK because I would rather watch my granddaughters compete. They remind me that the only part of sports I ever excelled at was bleacher sitting. With the proper family motivation, I can do it for hours.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
