No one ever came out to watch chess team matches!
Disparate impact: I thought there were all sorts of rules to make sure that girls' sports got equal funding etc to boys' sports? So, presumably, equal cheering opportunities.
From my own school experience, it's only true that team sports have weekly cheering opportunities if you are any good at the sport in question.
I was not.
Individual sports and non-sport activities ended up giving me a lot more opportunities to be cheered at than any team sport.
Right, girls team sports are run identically to boys team sports on this point. The division is really between activities where you have to practice in a spectator situation in order to get the hang of the activity, and activities where you don't. (But even that falls apart, because musical instruments and theater groups only have recitals once every few months.)
It's not overtly sexist exactly - it hits non-athletic kids similarly. It does prioritize traditional boy activities, though.
3: I think what heebie was saying is that, in practice, girls disproportionately end up doing single-performance activities (such as dance) while boys disproportionately end up doing weekly-performance activities (such as basketball). Not that there are no girls sports, but that it feels lopsidedly like the boys get more spectator time.
Which is why marching band is so great, because it's co-ed, and parents get dragged to TWO weekly performances: the Friday night football game, and the Saturday band competition at some godforsaken far-away place.
3: This kind of sports attendance has nothing to do with the quality of the athletes -- it's all about the quality of the parents.
High school plays typically have a run of at least a few shows, and instruments we had multiple opportunities for different kinds of performances (recitals, orchestra supporting a play or a dance.)
The problem is that a sport is a sport so you can compete right away in a new season, but plays and concerts and art they make/learn new pieces so you can't perform until the end of the "season". To solve the problem they should perform the same play or music every year, at least once a month. Make it a good one.
(More seriously, the only way I could see something like that is if there's some kind of improv show more frequently.)
That reminds me, some intellectual competitions (eg mock trial) are a tournament format so there are several weeks of making your parents drag you around to different performances.
Not if you suck at mock trial. We only did the one.
I had a mock trial performance as a witness that was so legendary they literally talked about it for decades after.
"They" being the advisor and subsequent teams at the school who were always told about it.
It did not involve nudity, violence, or bad language.
There just needs to be limits to how much parents have to suffer. Can you imagine having to go see a kids orchestra concert every week?
I think the actual solution is to make it more even by attending fewer team sports events.
13.2 is what occurred to me as well, but I'm not about to fight that battle.
Not that time, but that almost happened another time when we had to compete and I had a 103 fever and no one knew enough of my part to sub in!
You gotta figure by the 80th or 90th performance of Lil Abner they should be pretty good at it.
My parents never went to any of my sporting events.Or very few, anyway I don't think that was a thing that parents were expected to do until some time in the 1990s.
These days, there is a whole trope about how missing little Billy's soccer game is the considered the mark of a bad parent. But when I was a kid, the whole point of sending kids off to play sports was that you didn't have to spend time watching them. The only parents who had to be there were the ones who got stuck driving the carpool that week.
We didn't need encouragement because we didn't have cell phones and Instagram.
I'm probably the only one here who has seen the commercial about the ditzy mom at her daughter's soccer practice (or maybe, game). I guess it's a commercial for the minivan -- the bad mom spends the whole time entertaining herself in the vehicle instead of cheering on her daughter.
I was bad at a team sport and good at a team cultural activity and enjoyed and benefited from both. There were very few parent spectators at either, which was normal, and fine with me.
20.2 I sucked at spots but I did play little league baseball for a couple of seasons. I was truly awful and was more interested in looking at anthills on the field than watching for fly balls when I was in the outfield (it didn't help that my cleats were killing my feet). But the one time my dad missed my game was the one time I hit a home run right over the fences.
I sucked at spots
That's a very specific art class.
I don't recall there ever being cheerleaders at X-C skiing events.
But the one time my dad missed my game was the one time I hit a home run right over the fences.
I feel that this is a climactic scene in the Barry Freed biopic.
Nah. It'll be where he leads a convoy of Toyotas into the desert in pursuit of irreplaceable manuscripts.
A choice every young man should make as he starts out in life: which director do I ideally want to end up doing my biopic? (31: Steven Spielberg. 32: George Miller.)
Sadly, the only possible choice for kids today is Takashi Miike.
I'm hoping not Paul Greengrass because I suffer from motion sickness.
If you want a long life, hope for Peter Jackson.
31: The baseball scene is the climactic scene of the first part of the movie dealing with his childhood and setting up his lifelong quest to prove himself as a man.
The convoy of Toyotas in the desert could be the climactic scene near the end of the movie.
Speaking of, Green Zone is really fucking good. Like, don't watch without beta-blockers handy.
39: I didn't get it at first, but Moby alluded to this in the other thread.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_16736.html#2027957
40: I just saw that. Pwned again.
the one time my dad missed my game was the one time I hit a home run right over the fences
At least he didn't miss an inside-the-park home run.
I do think that sports games are effectively rehearsals that you are watching and that the real solution is that parents should be attending less of the regular games. Games will still be more frequent than performances, but the disparity wouldn't seem as dramatic.
and, the marching band is an interesting example (which seems to have adopted the sports & competition model).
the local jazz band, which is very competitive, seems to perform far more frequently, at the high school level, with gigs at cafes and paid performances at parties as well as official performances. I think a key is that they are good enough to just play, and are not still learning the skill.