I was interested at my 20th high-school reunion to note that the football kings and the cheerleaders they had married had gone to seed. Their high-school message had been, "You can only exercise with 21 other people. You prep for a game by eating a large steak. Laps are punishment." Or, "you are only active when hundreds are watching, and it is gymnastic rather than aerobic." It was better to have been a bicyclist, a hunter, a fisherman, a walker; those who had been still approximated (pretty closely, actually) the bodies they had had at 18. It's arguable, of course, iwhether the experience of operating as part of a team teaches life lessons not available to a road biker, but on balance, I'd rather have kept the high-functioning body and missed out on the initiation into teamery.
Veracity compels the admission that somehow I sired 3 children who lettered in football, soccer, swimming, rugby, baseball, basketball, track and cross country, wrestling and volleyball. God may be just, but certainly is humorous. As one who never saw a team sport that could not provide me with racking boredom, there were about 10 years there where I attended endless practices, endless games, and end-of-season sports banquets that stretched past 1 AM ("When I think of this kid, there's one word that comes to mind, and that one word is "HEART." Smitty, run the clip of Jimmy Jenkins at the Lakewood third-string game. There! People, did you SEE that? Re-run it, Smitty." Jimmy and his parents beam. And so for every member of the varsity, the JV, the sophomore team, the freshman team.
My kids are in early-onset middle age, and if they learned any special insight into the operation of life-teams, I can't discern it. (But of course I can't, given I got two recessives on the team-sport gene.) What I did learn was an abiding respect for coaches. Thank god I had no exposure to the rabid coaches mentioned above. All the coaches my kids had were selfless, generous, humorous, competent, skilled in their sport, fair. They helped raise my kids in areas where I was wholly incompetent.