Exercising My Demon: Netball
By: Olivia Wedderburn
Tags: Excercise, Netball, Body Positive, Sports, Body Image

When I was at school, sport of any kind scared me. I was nervous on my bike, useless at climbing ropes, and when, as part of some sort of modern day torture, we were forced to run laps of a recreational ground backed onto by train tracks, I would walk when concealed by bushes — self conscious of my puffy, purple cheeks and dreading coming in last to the claps of my lithe class mates, jeering. In fact, the only time I can remember feeling content in any sort of physical capacity in my school years was when I was bobbing in the swimming pool, letting the man made waves lap over my body, light and buoyant.

So, despite being desperate for camaraderie all my life, the powerful sensation of belonging to something, anything, I never got involved in team activities. When I did, I would be picked last or plucked into a team of underdogs in PE lessons. I found hockey terrifying, worried my teeth were going to be knocked out like the girl in the year above, the socks and shin pads itching as I sweat, my back twisted over the stick with no skill. Tennis lessons were more a humiliation exercise sponsored by my dyspraxia. My body, awkward, pubescent, chubby, found the contortionist element of gymnastics an inevitable mismatch. And netball, netball was my physical exercise nemesis.

Not nimble, due to years of hiding my body, I was slow. Not agile, my aforementioned dyspraxia meant hand ball coordination was lacking. Not strategic, I could never anticipate my oppositions play, let alone my own. Every time netball was on the agenda, it would happily coincide with me ‘forgetting my sports shoes’. A particularly haunting sports teacher (they all look the same for some reason, every depiction of a sports teacher ever seems to meld into one sort of stretched, lanky and cropped haircut with a disparaging look, all burrowed in the brow), would find these conveniences hilarious and set me to the side of the tarmac in my school uniform with a skipping rope — barking at me to jump the entirety of game play.

I knew enough about my lack of skills with netball to put it aside, to the back of my mind, and as I got older and even more hard on myself and stared in the mirror like a ghoul grabbing onto lumps of flesh and crying pretty much every day, I accepted that team activities were never going to happen for 2 reasons. 1) Because I was fundamentally useless and 2) nobody wants a fundamentally useless heifer on their centre court strategy.

I guess somewhere between then, 16, sad, and now 26, happy-ish, I had a revelation about myself and where I fit into the world. The sheer unadulterated fear of being seen exercising in public by impossibly toned bodies and even just your regular run of the mill flesh sacks lifted. Through a combination of growing older, working harder, finding the right kind of love for me, I ended up being someone who ran in public and walked to work and swam freely without worrying about my legs or tits or tummy suctioned into the unforgiving elastic of a swimsuit. And I guess that’s how, on the day after my twenty sixth year on this celestial plain, I found myself in a school’s gymnasium with around 35 other women, ready to learn how to play netball again.

These women were 16. They were 65. They were fat, they were thin. Some had disabilities, some looked like they’d never stopped playing. All races and backgrounds and abilities somehow melted into the lurid yellow lines of a court in Streatham. There was comedy to be had, through the terrible throws and that weird unbearable tension you get when you clash with a stranger when you’re all just meant to be having a nice time.

We saw these women, kind and strong, pounding the slick surfaces — freshly waxed, building up strength and skill and friendship. I began to get lifts home from a mum of two whose heart was impenetrable gold, but who swore every time her team didn’t block an opposing goal. My sister, who had come along with me for the fear I would be laughed out the building, broke up with her boyfriend around 5 weeks into the training and moved back in with my parents — unable to return. Faces would come up each week to ask me how she was doing and coping, with genuine interest and concern, a sense of community. Some women never came back from the training, but I like to think of them every Monday, maybe enjoying a glass of wine by a fire and thinking “this is more me”, and that’s fine, fine, fine.

And now, we sit in teams. I am in a team. My team are doing well. We’re top of the league. I’m Wing Attack, but maybe not fantastic. I am built up from the strength of the woman I play with, slick, fast, determined. It’s funny to think that I’ve had lots of friendships in my life, deep, bonded, emotional, traumatic, brief, terminal — but the affection and pride I have for my team mates is unique and new to me. From never feeling like I was worthy of achievement, I have now found myself slotted into a dynamic that makes me feel worthy. Worthy of my ability, because despite some dodgy passes, I also do some great ones. Worthy of my confidence, because you are pretty exposed out there, under the floodlights, umpires eyes like hawks, hunger in your oppositions eyes. And worthy of my body. This strange body of mine, that I’ve hated and pummelled and cried over, that has taken me across the world and into the arms of those I love, that has crumpled and straightened and bought me pleasure and pain. These thick strong thighs that have crushed bodies and climbed mountains. These momentous breasts that have taken the brunt of a ball more times than they’d like to remember and have broke free of sports bras whilst running.. These hips that have held players back from getting that centre pass, but have danced, danced, danced to music every single day for years and years and years. I don’t know if I’ll ever love my body like the magazines tell me to, but I do know that I am grateful for its existence, gliding down streets and onto dance floors.

We are, at heart, built up by those around us in our lives. The support systems that run rich through our narratives are what shapes who we are and how we navigate through this world. The love and bond I have with my family, my partner, my friends, is the foundations for my existence and where I have grown over the years. And all this time that I have complained about not being part of a team, I’ve been part of so many — rich tapestries of passion and pain and persistence. But now I’m part of a team in a physical sense, even just for a season, and it’s taught me more about myself than any therapy. We are all floating alone out here, and its those we bob toward that help us construct a raft.