The sole purpose of school sports should be to promote the physical well being and positive social interactions of students.
Maybe these sports once had some evolutionary value in human societies, back when raw physical prowess and testosterone poisoned comradery won wars, but none of that makes sense now, not since humans gained the ability to destroy their enemies by electronic propaganda and economic warfare, or in MAD scenarios, by throwing around nuclear weapons on missiles.
I'm thinking of my grandfather here. He was an Army Air Corp officer in World War II. He joined the Army Air Corp to escape rural Wyoming, see the world, fly planes, and woo the ladies wherever he landed. Unfortunately he was also a klutz. Watching him ride a bicycle, or swim in anything but a small surf, were some of the most terrifying things I witnessed as a kid. Grandpa is going to die! The Army, in its wisdom, did not let him fly airplanes or play with guns. I've heard he flew an airplane once. Just once. And none of his relatives would invite him hunting.
I can still hunt, I like to believe, but haven't in the 21st century. I flew an airplane once. Didn't take off or land. Didn't break anything.
My grandfather was some kind of wizard with exotic metals, and a competent intermediary between ordinary military society and brilliant people far weirder than he was. He never talked about his military service. He did a dirty job that had to be done and I suspect a lot of it was messy and secret. His knack for making impossible parts out of exotic metals is unexplained.
He would talk about bits of metal he made for the Apollo Project. He was fiercely proud of that.
I'm a klutz. School sports culture was hell on me. In sixth grade they used to leave me far out in left field picking through the grass, biologist that I am, even as the innings changed. I was always last pick, after the kid with the tremor and coke bottle bottom glasses because he was always nice. I was not always nice. I could break noses with my elbow.
I quit high school. Never attended a football game or dance. Didn't care.
In college I got to know a lot of people in co-ed recreational running and softball, and that's when I finally understood the value of sports.
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