I am not a sports person. I can’t run very quickly, I have low stamina, I have the hand-eye coordination of a concussed frog and I probably don’t have the mental fortitude to be able to hold my own as any kind of goalie.

Now, reader, you might be wondering—So then why on earth are you writing a sports column?

I am not a sports person by any means. But, like many, I want to stay in shape. A majority of my life so far has been spent bouncing from sport to sport, much to my parents’ chagrin. I’ve run through dance, volleyball, soccer, basketball, swimming and water polo.

In that journey, I’ve learned a lot about sports (obviously) and more importantly myself.

I started on the ballet floor with a close friend of mine from childhood. If I’m honest, all I remember from that hazy part of childhood is being castigated for messy hair and for slouching. If I’m honest, not much has changed. Either way, the shoes, the poise and the strictly regimented movement were beautiful, alright. But they grated on me like nothing I had faced before. I didn’t last long in that ballet studio.

Up next was volleyball—I had to like volleyball, right? Most of my friends did at the time. We looked cute in spandex-still-long-enough-to-be-appropriate-for-fourth-graders. There was only one problem, though: I was tall enough to reach the bottom of the net with an outstretched hand if I was lucky. I liked volleyball well enough, but not enough to fight for the ball with the star Varsity players towering over me.

Soccer camp in the summer was another nightmare for me. I was doing pretty well, I thought, before the coach asked me for my age, something I had neglected to tell him in the first place because he had sorted me into the group based on height. “Twelve,” I said, puffing out my chest. I was doing so well that they couldn’t believe how young I was!

He waved me over to a group of taller kids on the far end of the field. As it turns out, I had been in the elementary age group instead of the middle age group. My soccer career took a turn for the worse after that shift.

In basketball, I faced much of the same trials as I had in volleyball and soccer, except this time it was coupled with my total lack of coordination for utter disaster. The only shots I could reliably make were free throws, and I had the tendency to hit my teammates square-on in the chin when I chest-passed, which did not endear me to them whatsoever, strangely enough.

Swimming came next, a dark time in my life. I don’t want to sound too melodramatic, but I was miserable. A pool? Oh no. A competitive swim team? Oh dear. Long-course? Uh oh. Outdoors in the winter? Argh. Early morning practice? You have to be [expletive] kidding me.

I found water polo to be the most promising out of all the sports options I had staggered through so far. It was incredibly aggressive (even more so in club water polo), but the adrenaline kept me moving far past my stamina comfort zone, and I liked the weightlessness of water while still having the tangible goal of getting the ball into the goal.

Even so, there was one crucial thing I could never get the hang of was treading water, the veritable staple of the sport. After every game, I would practically cough up lungfuls upon lungfuls of pool water because I couldn’t get the simplest of maneuvers to work.

After this ordeal, I at last called it quits for organized sports. I saw that I wasn’t happy running up and down a field or kicking my way across a pool. Admittedly, talent or aptitude for a certain sport is only a small part of what makes a good player. I probably could have improved in any of the above sports if I had dedicated a significant amount of time to practice, but, as many around me know, life as a Harker student doesn’t always allow for such luxuries.

Moreover, I simply wasn’t happy, because throughout all of this I had prioritized trying to be fit over my own happiness.

Harker’s P.E. requirement loomed over me throughout sophomore year, so I signed up for a semester of capoeira at the Upper School, thinking I would grit my teeth for three hours out of the week, go through the motions, and finish up as soon as I could.

I ended up tumbling headfirst into one of my favorite pastimes.

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian style of martial arts played mainly in a circular manner with strikes from the feet. When the sport was banned for a time in Brazil, elements of dance and acrobatics were combined with the fighting in order to “disguise” the martial art from onlookers. The combination of the aggression, the acrobatics and the subterfuge simply make for a fantastic game. It just clicked for me, and after the first few classes, I was a permanent customer.

The important part of this trek was prioritizing my own happiness over competing with my classmates, and dedicating myself to something that is entirely my own, and not merely something that I thought would look good to other people.

Last week, I finished my P.E. credit requirements for good, but I still plan on going to capoeira this coming semester.